I spent most of last week in Tucson, where the temperature upon my arrival Monday morning was a toasty 102, though, of course, a ‘dry heat’ with a mere 8% humidity, nature’s own diuretic, sucking the fluids right out of you. I went to visit with my mother and stepdad—a descriptor that sill throws me, since I was 40 when they got married, four years after my father’s death; four years of desperate encouragement by her children, ‘Please, Mom, find a man.’ She did well with Garvin the Gentle, a retired for real rocket scientist of the military/industrial complex back in the Cold War who lost his first wife to cancer, and is six years my mother’s junior, for which, natch, I accused her of robbing the cradle.
My mom’s 87, though in the fast lane towards 88 in July. They live part of the time in L.A. and the other part in Tucson, the spread made necessary by the few remaining friends they have still living (which largely explains their graciousness: they can’t afford not to be). Mom: “The problem with outliving everybody is you have to watch them die.” That’s a different slant—though perhaps the same mindset—on what I’ve told my kids when they’re having to endure the insanity of their in-laws, ‘Just remember God put them there for your entertainment.’ Same advice I provide for my kids’ spouses about their in-laws, by the way. Mom and I speculated as to whether she would be the star of the next show or, once again, a spectator for one of her children, given that we’re all standing with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, though we took no bets, expressed no wishes. They have a neat little place in a rv/mobile home park for retirees, mostly northern snowbirds flocking south for the winter. A couple of miles from their place in the desert sits a vast field where are parked retired military aircraft—WWII bombers and B-52’s and that ass-in-the-air thing I was shuffled by in Vietnam (a dozen of us sitting in a row on the floor, strapped in by one long seatbelt with a bizarre pretense of safety). The field might even house a museum, I don’t know. The retirees call it ‘the boneyard’. The remaining relics of generations passing into history, ‘What was vietnam Grampa?’
‘Well, child, whereas WWII revealed the nobility of America, Vietnam revealed the dark and destructive shadow of it when arrogant and paranoid and ignorant leaders confused pride for righteousness and started a war in a little southeast Asian country. The U.S. dropped millions of bombs on ‘em killing ten of thousands of people just going about their lives. During those days, our government forced hundreds of thousands of boys to go over there and fight; 55,000 of our own kids were killed. Then we were humiliatingly defeated, so all the killing had been to no avail. But the more people that died, the more noble they told us it was. That’s what governments always say when they need a war, the old flag-wavin’ razzle-dazzle. Killing people is not merely a rational decision, you gotta stir ‘em up. That’s why, my little one, you gotta pay attention to what our leaders say about killing people, ’cause only you can determine the truth, and then you gotta shoot your mouth off about it. I know, ’cause I was in ‘Nam. . . .’
‘Mom! Grampa’s spacin’ out again!’
I’m not a site-seer. But I followed my incredulous grunt at the invitation to cruise downtown Tucson with an inquiry into the distance to those mountains up there; and so we ascended into the high desert wilderness of the Catalinas, the road dead-ending at a little settlement at 8500 feet, where it was a cool 30 degrees cooler, the gift shop newly rebuilt after ‘the fire.’ The thunderstorm awakened just as we headed back, and pelted us with squishy bouncing hail for a bit, but we escaped it by descent, much as I had escaped a similar ‘what the hell?’ situation on the Blue Ridge Parkway, coming out of the Smokies national park through a tunnel into suddenly fog and then snow flurries on Memorial Day weekend a few years back, elevation being everything. I wanted to see the Catalina wilderness because, having sold my sailboat and given up the idea of owning another thanks in large measure to the Fuckheads of Finance who are still whining for their bonuses, I’ve acceded to the darling’s preferences for camping. Though not content with simply going out and buying, say, a pop-up tent trailer, I’ve decided to build my own along the styles of the ‘tear-drop trailers’ of the 1940’s and 50’s; nay, I’ve decided to turn it into a summer project for the men of our clan (beer, bonding, and bandages, as it were), and even now while surveying the campgrounds of the Catalinas the trailer I ordered for it was being built.
I remembered that an old friend—Rick the Clown who did sermons dressed like a clown and workshops especially for teens on ‘clowning’—had recently accepted a call to Oro Valley, so I got in touch with him and insisted he pick me up and take me to a meal, because he lived in a valley of gold, and sure enough he both did pick me up and had found gold by way of a jaw-dropping salary package. I’m glad for that, because he once helped save my life. Rick the Clown and MarcO and I used to get together years back monthly at the Chinese buffet. One day over sweet ‘n sour pork they said, ‘We’ve been talking about it and we think you’re screwed up Keene. You need to see a psychiatrist.’ So I saw the shrink and was introduced to anti-depressants and got even with The Clown the next time we played golf, following a lovely tee shot for which he held the television pose and earned, ‘Lovely form, if it weren’t for that huge ol’ grocery sack hanging over your belt.’ Next time we played golf, he was thin. Over lunch in Tucson I helped him with the sermon he had to preach later on this Ascension Day quoting scripture and the angel: ‘Men of Judea why do you stand there looking up Jesus’ skirts? You know he’s too poor for underwear.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ says he, ‘I do miss scatological theology.’
The Thursday evening flight home was as uninteresting as always, save for a spate of conversation with my seat mate, a forensic toxicologist currently heading to his home to Budapest, Hungary after giving presentations at colleges here (must be famous in his line) who apologized for his English; ‘better than my Hungarian’ I confessed. ‘You know any Hungarian?’ ‘Um. . .’goulash?” He looked out the window, then changed the subject.
On Friday Doc Boner and I hooked up to take delivery on the aforementioned trailer and walked into the unintentional incompetence brought about by the well-meaning summarized in the trailerman’s introduction, ‘Since you ordered it without sides or floor, the boys in the shop thought they ought to beef it up in other ways,’ and from the anticipation of a ‘light utility trailer’ quite sufficient for carrying what is essentially a wooden tent weighing at the most extreme most 750 pounds I encountered the reality of a major hulk built to carry—easily—a small bulldozer. Even empty I could not lift the tongue to the ball hitch on my pickup. But we brought it home and looked at it and talked about it and I decided I had to find a friend with a cutting torch ’cause there’s way too much steel on that thing. It seems weird to order this thing custom built and then take a cutting torch to it, but there you go: the cost of creation.
On Friday night The Queen and I finally had our grand reunion when she showed up with her parents, smiling and happy to see each other after all these so many days apart. I’d been in Tucson for our normal Tuesday time, and indeed was even surprised to find myself thinking about her then. A suddenly new experience, really, since I didn’t recall the experience of missing my own kids like this and wondered if I ought to feel guilty. But then I realized ‘that’s ’cause you didn’t have a chance to miss ‘em—they were around all the time, like leeches you can’t shake’ and felt better. She hollered for me to take our usual private stroll around the backyard, and I told her the story of how I’d baptized her two weeks earlier at my old stomping grounds, Messiah, the first time back since leaving in ‘03. I’d turned down the invitation to preach, declaring instead a ‘dunk ‘n run’, which is essentially what I did ’cause the day wasn’t about me but about God and the grandkid, though I did tell the congregation after their promises to tend to her spiritual well-being that if they didn’t, I’ll be back. I told her her whole family was there for it all, both at church and at the barbecue served out on our deck afterwards—the European side of us, and the Filipino side and the African American side, and on top of that my friend of the spirit Seattle Suzanne was there as well. And The Queen, practicing her conversational eloquence responded flicking her tongue ‘b-dah, b-dah, b-dah’, Pentecost not yet having arrived. So I spoke in a different tongue and picked her up and hugged her.
It’s Memorial Day and over the weekend I’ve been flashing on Oil Spill Tracy and Wonderful Nancy because their son graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy a few days back. I confirmed that boy—and his sister, at a different time—two of the niftiest kids I ever encountered, a puzzling marvel, given that Oil Spill himself was such a, er, well, Dittohead back in those days; we’ve had our share of snarling at each other politically. I initially chalked their kids up to the influence of Wonderful Nancy, but then I got a clue (especially after working with her on the church staff) that maybe both of ‘em in fact had something to do with that. I started flashing because the darling mentioned them following a news report of Obama speaking at the graduation, wondering how that went over with them.
I’m hoping they were proud enough to pee their pants; not, of course, because of Obama, but because of their children, and on this day their son in particular, the newly-minted Ensign, an officer of the United States’ Navy, sworn to uphold (with his life) the Constitution of the United States and to follow the orders of the Commander-in-Chief regardless of what political party he/she/it is affiliated with, and regardless of what his parents think about it. His primary allegiance now is to a cause, to a human body that transcends family. I know something about taking an oath of service: when I was ordained I vowed to serve the Body of Christ, a cause that transcended my own family of origin and in some ways separated me from them. It is not too much to say that Oil Spill and Wonderful have given up their son to serve the defense of our nation.
I give thanks for what they’ve done, and what their son is doing, and all who’ve committed their lives in transcendent service for the safety and good of our country. This week’s travels were made possible by them
Larry
