Page 7
Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 11:22AM Sarah and I enjoyed some coffee this morning—decaf for her—at McDonalds. It’s decent coffee, I guess, but I don’t fancy myself much of a connoisseur of the bean, I just like what coffee does. Not just the caffeinated invigoration, but the social experience. Gathering around coffee was once a dangerous political activity in Medieval Europe. I kid you not. French aristocrats thought coffee a dangerous catalyst to the academic minds who gathered to drink it. Coffee houses were actually banned. A paranoid establishment would most likely tag the two of us dangerous to the state. When we drink coffee not only do we take great care to ridicule those in power (of our paychecks), but we also laugh like loons. The people present at Mickey D’s this morning; the thousands of pounds of humanity (all three of them), kept swiveling away from their meal and wondering what was wrong with the two pregnant looking people. But that’s what we do when we’re together. We laugh--with the exception of when we’ve waited too long to eat dinner and we’re both so hungry our sentiments for each other border on disgust. Sarah and I are nutty gigglers. I think she’s the funniest person alive. She gets it. She gets the picture that makes something funny. Not only that, but she can accurately and briefly describe the caricature I have in my head making me howl with reckless abandon. For example, at about three this morning we were awakened by a terrifying screaming sound. It was like nothing I’d ever heard and my imagination kicked into gear. It conjured an image of a large, demonic bird comprised only of bones and talons. I thought it might be stealing the souls of our neighbors. While I was beginning to calculate how one would battle such a beast (vinegar-filled water balloons was my first impulse—keep that in mind), Sarah was at the window watching the real source of the noise. It was a fox barking at a cat. Yes, a fox, blessed with the total package of grace and beauty, has to deal with the embarrassing downside of trying to intimidate its adversaries by expelling a high-pitched squeal not unlike Dave Mathews on helium. Sarah looked at me and said, “A fox scared of a cat? A fox should be able to beat a cat.” And this declaration painted a scene in my head that made me laugh. To clarify my rude guffawing at her zoological assumptions, all I was able to say was that she sounded like a kid speculating on an imaginary battle. Right away she knew of what I spoke and articulated it to perfection. She mimicked a child. “Do you think Batman could beat up Superman? I know they wouldn’t fight because they’re on the same team, but if they did, who would win?” Perfect. I laughed more. She, however, had moved on and was cementing in her mind the necessary phrases to Google for more information about fox noises. First, though, she wanted to get back to sleep. Her powerful curiosity is only ever stymied by her devout attention to moderation, and sleep. Which is good, since I’m rarely curious (she reads instruction manuals, I make very creative guesses), and I think ‘cold turkey’ is the time between beers. But I won’t bore you with a list of virtues. I could just scan a Hallmark card for that. What I will do is tell a story. At first it’s funny, then gets very sad then turns back to something familiar before blowing away like so many dandelion seeds.
It starts last night, hours before the panicked fox emboldened cats everywhere to believe they could have their way with the smaller, fluffy-tailed dogs. I was standing on the lawn holding the hose over a parched patch of grass. I must have looked like the mascot for middle-aged men everywhere. Luckily it was dark. At first I was chuckling at what Sarah’s reaction might be to seeing her husband instantly age twenty years. Just add water. Then someone turned up some Mexican music. The billowing sound of the tuba/accordion jam blasted big and round like an adobe cannonball headed straight for the tidy rows of ranch-style whiteness. I thought of our older neighbors cringing under the brass bombing of sudden change. The people who manicure their lawn are actually moving in! Get the hell out! I also thought of Sarah, who could be one of the only office managers in Denver’s downtown business district who listens to La Gran D, Uno ciento uno punto nueve. (That’s supposed to say 101.9 in Espanol.) And I think that’s pretty cool. Rarely does she understand the lyrics to the songs, so when she sings them aloud, we hold hope that they are positive, friendly words. And this takes me to Mexico, where Sarah, my sister, her husband, Dan; my mom and I walked the streets of a little town of some name I’ve forgotten. We’d just finished an actual authentic Mexican meal and were bound for the beach. My mother, blind in one eye and probably a whole lot more weary than she’d ever let on, lagged a few paces behind. She might have been a little faster had she not danced while she walked. She had a tune caught in her head. She rocked rhythmically in a sing-song motion. This took her zigzag more than forward and my sister, Laura, and myself, very much used to her publicly relishing her freedom of artistic expression, rolled our eyes and moved ahead. It did not help her cause that the song wormed into her head was called Cabron. She sang it aloud thinking it meant cowboy. She sang it to me, to Dan and to any and all strapping muchachos very much torn by the flagrant name-calling and appearance of the cute little lady responsible for it. They’d look at her and then glance at Dan and myself, as if our being the males in the pack meant we were to answer for her errant Spanish. Dan and I tried to look distracted. My wife did not. Sarah, newly anointed Cabrona, walked with my mom. They bought ice cream and tried to eat it faster than could the Mayan sun.
That cobblestone street ended with our scheduled flight back to Denver. The open street markets and boozing beachgoers became sobering news and sanitized floors. The polished tile burped up the ceiling’s fluorescent lighting. Luminous phlegm. There was no clear reflection, just a murky glare. We’d triumphed over the dirt on the floor and darkness above, but things still were not clear. My sister and I walked hand-in-hand with mom. The labyrinthine Swedish hospital complex is not easy for blind people to navigate, let alone those who can barely see through their tears.
Two days after the doctor invoked god and wished us luck, I had to ask “what?” in a rather snotty, irreverent fashion. That’s not how I wanted to sound but what I’d heard was, “the girls are on top of the rock!” I held further questioning and my mom continued. “The girls are on top of the rock, and we’ve got the power!” Then I had to ask, letting out the “what”, but slamming the door on “the hell are you talking about.” It dissolved in the silence between me and a woman reaching into the dark for an answer. She lofted her right hand straight up and out, closed it into a fist. She lay below it, defunct eyes closed. I stayed quiet. Wherever she was, she stood strong. On this rock, on top of the Noku Crags, perhaps. I imagined a fierce bird of prey, wild and deadly in nature, yet softened at the sight of this woman. Calmed yet focused on the extended arm of his master, he’d pull up for landing. Whirls of dust would spiral around the rocks and wisp away at the foot of the union. The gust gave the leaves a tremble.
“Follow your heart.” I snapped back from the little mental journey to the mountains. My mom brought her arm back to her side. One last vision gave me the bird bowing in reverence before lifting away. His gift of clarity just a speck against the sky.
I may have retreated deeper than my mom. Which would be remarkable since her blind delusions had her ordering from a chef named Quintanamos who, as far as Sarah and I could tell, worked in the bathtub.
This all started with the pot, an appropriate term for toilets because my blind mother imagined we’d gotten rid of our modern plumbing and were making her sit on what she explained was just “an earthen pot.” That was one of her complaints to the concerned visitors from the Colorado Center for the Blind. They had not been worried when they first 
stopped by. Oh no, everybody was cordial and sharing their experiences. Then they offered my mom, Sarah and me some helpful hints. They were showing us how to use the ‘5’ button on a touchtone phone to locate all the other numbers (the five has bumps), when my mom interjected with a dire announcement. She explained to the visiting blind man and his very serious seeing counterpart that I’d bricked off her bedroom’s doorway and filled her room with bicycles. The dialing seminar ended abruptly. The head of Colorado’s seeing impaired assistance program sat there stunned. Sitting on our couch she continued to hold out our cordless phone so that we might all hear the different number tones. The last beep we heard was a mindless button pushing that escaped her brain while she turned to look at me.
Aghast at my actions she inquired, “Is this true?”
I looked at my mom who still looked like she could see. A life of vision had given her the gift of earnest facial expressions. She pulled up from a reclining position and for emphasis slid to the edge of the cushion. I was about to get a serious talking-to.
Figuring this wouldn’t be the best time to scold my mother (“Mom, would you please put a lid on it!”), I closed my eyes, took a breath, and offered our guests a tour. They accepted and all rose for the occasion. With the exception of my mother who stayed on the couch and shouted “good luck getting past the flaming pit,” as we walked down the hallway.
The visiting woman was so relieved to see I had not turned my mother’s quarters into a sealed chamber full of dangerous refuse that she touched my hand and laughed the way you do when you find out it’s all been a practical joke. The blind guy wasn’t so sure. He maintained an angry grimace. It looked like he might be thinking of a thousand awful tricks pulled on him. I think I heard taunting laughter of children. We watched in silence as he finished poking about the doorway and the floor. Still he didn’t look satisfied. For a moment he had his opportunity to wreak some vengeance on one of those cruel kids. I was spared a beating. Somewhere in his darkness he did his best to pack away the memories.
I turned and invited the others to pass me down the hall. The woman grabbed the man's hand and headed back to the living room, where my mom was awaiting our return. She told all of us that she needed a toilet, but a little clay bowl would have to do.
It wasn’t too much later, about when I was staring out the kitchen window and wondering if our willow tree knew or even cared about time, when I was asked if Quintanamos should put hickory sauce or cheese on my burger.
Reader Comments (4)
Jen