Log Cabins
Apr 10 2008 | Views 457 |
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Tags: styrofoam peanuts thanks dad new apartment crowded city rsquo
Tags: styrofoam peanuts thanks dad new apartment crowded city rsquo
Log Cabins
Everything my father ever gave me was because it did not fit in his log cabin. I'm talking about the one he moved into after twenty years of about ten moves that he and my mother made since Me.
The first time he called me up, a couple years ago, the familiar tones of his voice, jumped out of sealed cells in my head.
That again was right after my older brother Rich and Shannon got married. I knew they had married. When you don’t get invited, you have a way of finding out more than if you were.
Shannon proved she can have babies. She had one from a previous marriage but that was enough baby-making for Rich. He would rather adopt a child than have one.
So Rich married Shannon and a phone call resulted to me in my cozy pad in a crowded city.
"Hey Vernon," says dad, talking like he had last called me yesterday, "I need you to come look at some stuff I have for you. I think you might like it for your new apartment."
I had not told him about my new apartment and the four I had moved through in the last few years, but like I said, there is a way of getting to know things that people don’t tell you.
"Thanks dad," I said. I had probably sung all the way as I drove to his then home, only to find a moving van parked in the driveway.
"Hi," I say as I go in the open door, wondering if anyone was in. Were people moving out or in?
Dad is covered in peanuts and packing grit as I come in. He and mom are taking out old pictures and packing them in and he has this giant bag of Styrofoam peanuts, some flying around and swirling about his heads like little green birds.
"It's me dad, Vernon," I Say.
"Oh Hi son, I have your stuff ready for you, its all in the next room."
He motions me to the room and I see the large wooden magnolia sideboard with the straight wooden lines in the grain and I am reminded sharply just before I tighten my tongue that dad does not like that I notice these things.
I go back and he says, "That will be ten thousand dollars for all that."
I freeze and look at him, the words rearranging themselves in my head, the way they do when you cant believe what you heard and the replay only changes what you understood.
He says after a pressure filled fifteen seconds, "I would have asked Rich to buy the stuff, but he and Shannon are planning to have a baby, they need to save their money."
He is confident I am not going to need money for babies.
"Were moving to a log cabin in Maine," he says. "We've been here two years. It became time to move again son. You know," he says and turns away so I don’t see what happens to the shine in his eyes.
Mom is crying in the background. She had always cried at night since Me. Sometimes I would wake up in the night and she would be crying. I would stand at her door and listen and wonder how dad could not hear her while sleeping beside her.
She waves at half mast to me and I write a check to Dad and he loads all the stuff in my van and I drive off so he does not see what happens to the shine in my eyes.
It was time they had to move again and I blame myself again.
Funny how sometimes the last time you see people happens a long time ago and later you realize, that time I saw them had been a last time. That was two years ago.
There would be no more moving for mom and dad. Apparently one lonely night they had driven off the bridge that led to their log cabin.
Rich must still have been busy planning that baby because I beat him to the cabin. There is a sad sense of Déjà vu because I see a U-Haul in the driveway and it is filled with log-cabin size furniture.
I go in and the house is almost empty. I slowly enter their small sun-chinked rooms. I see my mom's bed and there is a faded old-fashioned looking picture on it. Their marriage photo! I see photos of her holding baby Rich and baby me. She was sad then too.
I think of mom and the life she had led. All those tears that had never quite washed enough out. How she must have felt moving every two years.
She and dad must start out right and slowly people come to ask about your children and then you tell them carefully about Rich and his family and then gently talk about you other son, Me. Time passes and then you tell a little more and a little more and then you’ve told them pretty much what you swore you would not tell, but facts have a way of coming out in the telling.
Once everyone knows and gives you that little space in which you see clearly that they know, that’s when you move. I look around her bedroom and slowly lock the cabin. What was in it is no longer there. I look at the photo one last time. I thought at first it had been mine, but it is dad.
How long had mom been crying before Me, I wondered. Who was it that had wanted to move? What of all those un-caught bedroom tears.
I learned that they had left everything to Rich. The secret, it died with Me.
© milirao., all rights reserved.
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