28 - Sights Along the Way

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them -- Oscar Wilde

The hills are only green for a month or so

Mom wanted to see me yesterday so I drove down. She lives with a view of Suisun Bay and its bridges and refineries, just up from a long disused ferry slip. It is entirely appropriate that she would spend these waning years in sight and smell of the "old" Bay Area, where cars used to line up before they built the Benicia Bridge, where there was a thriving shipbuilding industry a century ago, where William Leidesdorff's little steamboat Sitka huffed slowly past on its way to New Helvetia on the Sacramento in 1847. Her condo is full of light and books and the best of her old furniture. We had soup and salad. She wanted to talk about Jimmy.

Jimmy was such a rambunctious and unmindful child she kept him on a harness when she would take him to the park while pregnant with Steve. She remembers a woman saying that with a child like that, she was brave to have another. He was calmer by the time he was four and in January of that year they learned he had leukemia. In and out of the hospital, prayer, counseling. A parish priest with a young family of his own spent a lot of time with both my parents, and some with us little kids. My parents did not communicate much. They dealt with the pain in their own ways. Dad was not religious by any means.

Mom remembers very clearly visiting Jimmy at Children's Hospital in Oakland and hearing him say something about if he goes home again. Not when. If. He never did. He died two months after his fifth birthday, in November of 1959. Steve was three. I was one. Not long after, she held my younger cousin for the first time, who was just a few weeks old.

Then they split, went their separate ways, distracted by the Sixties, ignored Steve and I to a large degree, ya da ya. I've covered that enough in other places, I'm really thinking I should read one of those books about forgiving your parents. I pretty much have done so by now. You have to at some point and their becoming increasingly dependent on you is a pretty good sign that it's time. We talked about that too, and she got a sense that it really wasn't an issue for me. Not anymore. Yes, when I was raising my own kids and felt so helpless so many times, flailing about in a darkness not illuminated by role models and experience. But that time is past.

Mount Diablo from near Mom's house

I drove on to my father’s house to meet a realtor. Dad moved out last year and I’ve been going through it, bringing the crap he doesn’t want up to my house, throwing crap away, generally emptying the place out. Now it’s time to plan cleanup and sale. Fortunately, no major repairs needed. The agent saw that it just needed paint and flooring, a few minor fixes, nothing big. Pretty good considering my grandparents bought it in 1974. But next week I will pursue a second opinion. I think this guy spent thirty years in banking and only does low-end real estate now because he needs a job. In other words, I’m not sure I can bank on his experience.

Wildflowers 'n stuff

I called my dad later to ask about ownership and inheritance. The house was never really his. When his mother died it went into a trust, for which he is trustee, and when all is sold and done he will split the money in the trust between my brother and I. The idea was to avoid ballooning his net worth into the realm of death-taxable. Besides, he doesn’t need the money. Us young’uns arguably do.

He was about to suggest it was time to call a realtor when I told him I had just met a realtor. Evidently we’re all on the same page. He’s glad I’m doing it all and he doesn’t have to bother. Never mind that he’s no longer capable physically. He also says he’s tending more and more to hibernate. He’s all there, but he’s not there all the time, and his world is shrinking. I think his world now pretty much consists of his rooms, and the people he shares a dinner table with, and a short list of doctors and specialists. It must be a melancholy experience; but then, when your horizons shrink, your apparent universe remains the same size, doesn’t it.

Diablo after taking off her cloak of clouds

Mom’s world isn’t shrinking. She’s still a docent at the Asian Art Museum, and is going to take a tour of New York City in a couple months. She’s never been there outside a one-day Gray Line tour she took with her two teenage boys in the early Seventies. After getting rooms for under thirty dollars in Nevada, I was shocked that her hotel bill was going to be two eighty five per night. She can’t afford that (my opinion). But she asked about senior discounts. Oh, they said, if you’re over eighty it’s just eighty dollars. Ha, she said, me and my friend are both over eighty and we can prove it. I wonder if the hotelier said, damn, should have said ninety.

Sometimes old stuff floats around forever

I know my boys will have to forgive me some day. I hope it’s no big deal and the need doesn’t hamper them in any way. But I have a few memories of parenting failure on my part that just break my heart. But I was here for them, by and large, and that might be the important thing. I can only hope those moments of daddy fail don’t take up much space.

See, lately I’ve been letting incidents out from my childhood that had been buried for decades, stories my wife never heard and that just make her shake her head. Incidents of parent fail that somehow buried themselves like wasp larvae to quietly release poison into my system over the years. Now they’re coming out, and so I naturally wonder what wasp larvae my kids are bearing that will come out when they’re fifty. Or thirty, or twenty one with any luck. Moments when I just wasn’t there and said something cruelly stupid, or didn’t do something that needed to be done, or what have you.

There’s no taking any of it back. These experiences are part of what make us. Just sayin’, you know.

I dove home, thinkin’ all the way. Driving’s good for that.