VISITING DAY / THE LETTER

A dream of day gone by, movements not realized

Before entering the great circular room through massive pale blue glass doors, I stood at the entrance spying on the occupants.

      Inside, the room was teeming with all the nuances of age and dying. Frailty, awkwardness, fear, loneliness, and near blindness were oblivious to the newcomer standing at the door.
      Nurses dressed in starched brilliant whites ushered patients to their waiting visitors. A methodical dance was occurring to a tune inaudible to everyone but the participants. Those sitting alone, filled with hope, cautiously glimpse the room for traces of familiarity, ever fearful no one made the trip.
      As I pushed on the polished aluminum bar to enter, I was intrigued by how easily the massive glass doors pivoted in unison, like a great stage curtain, they opened into the great room with only the slightest effort on my part. An invention of 1950s engineers, invisible pins positioned top and bottom supported the hundreds of pounds of pale green tempered glass as effortless motion coaxed the uninitiated forward.
      Once inside the art decco waiting room, scents of floor polish and World War Two government cleaning fluid raced past me and escaped out the slow closing doors behind me.
      An added touch of institutional ism was the brilliant reflection of the summer sun on polished nineteen-fifties taupe and dark green nine-inch asbestos floor tiles.
      Floor-to-ceiling two-foot wide single pane windows encased the circular waiting room with just enough outside visibility to remind a person nature existed, but not enough to allow the daydreamer to forget where they were.
      With my pockets stuffed with imagined obstacles and anxieties, I somehow started across the great room. The experience reminded me of crossing the great room at London's central train station. The great granite columns and grandeur were so monumental that all sound was lost in the enormity of the room. A sense of insignificance quickly overtook the uninitiated traveler when you stepped through the monstrous swinging brass doors onto the main granite floor. The experience was breathtaking and one I shall never forget.
      Just as my knees weakened, and reserves started to fade, I reached the other side of the room, and hat in hand sat down on a bright orange nineteen seventies retro plastic and chrome chair. This experience, although not quite equal in weight to London, was also worth keeping.
      I took the liberty of hiding in my cocoon of obscurity while searching my thoughts in vain for a reason to leave. I slowly raised my eyes and prayed someone sitting across the room had not found my awkward entrance interesting enough to stare back. I could use the feeling of nausea as an excuse to vanish, but then I would have to rise, cast myself defenseless out to the crowd, and cross the floor again.
       I was sure, my insecurities awaited me halfway across the room to those massive closed glass doors.
      Even as a young adult, situations of someone else's creation always made me anxious and a bit queasy. Real or imagined, I needed to find that exquisite excuse that would lend its courage and allow me to leave without guilt. My heart was pounding as my gaze searched the massive room in vain. Muffled voices from a few feet away only added to the suffocation.
     I turned to see overwhelming sadness as a young woman's face lost all animation when her eyes met mine and she realized she had drawn attention to her situation. Briefly, I was compelled to stare as she whispered to someone who mentally abandoned her long ago.
      I must have been watching forever and engrossed in her pain when I realized the subject of the young woman's attention was staring at me. The ancient woman's curiosity remained genuine as she then turned to look out across the great room. I followed her lead, and I too once again cast my gaze across the room. I soon realized that I was the only person in the room that was sitting alone!
      I lowered my eyes just long enough to see the borrowed suit I was wearing had taken on a life of its own. Starch I sprayed on the early seventies secret agent silver material before putting the hot iron to it had succumbed to the day's excitement.
      Anxiety had started to raise its ugly head again as I looked down and realized my arms were four inches longer than the frayed edges of the shiny James Bond material. With a sigh of exhaustion and sweaty fingers, I released strained buttons from their impossible task and leaned back to gather my confidence.
      Once relaxed, I slipped back into invisibility and started thinking about the day before yesterday when I decided to come and visit. I closed my eyes and sat silently in the plastic chair remembering those sad days. I remember after receiving the letter, how doubt and self-incrimination tormented me when I thought of the wonderful family models depicted by society's know-it-alls.
      While selfishly darting in and out of those memories, my eyes suddenly focused on an older, well-groomed woman slowly moving around the edge of the huge room. Intent on finding just the right chair before sitting, she paused, then slowly turned and looked around the whole room. Her gaze ended back where it had started, on a lime green retro chrome and plastic chair she held to steady herself.
      She slowly turned to sit down, so slowly, she reminded me of a person savoring every moment, as if the last. Like an actor who practices the same move repeatedly, she smiled knowing her cleverness and agility were hers alone. She had a natural smile. In addition, as I secretly watched from afar, she offered it up freely to all who looked her way. For all I knew, she could not see me sitting so far away; yet I felt a child's vulnerability and turned my head as her search threatened familiarity as it passed my way.
      This was a special day, a visiting day at the state-owned assisted living facility, or so the uninvited letter teased. I had never envisioned such a place and somehow felt guilty for it. There in my borrowed suit, and by invitation, I realized I had no business there.
      This was a sacred place for caring soles and listeners. I should be outside in the real world filling my gut with experiences of every kind! Instead, I wallowed in personal irresponsibility, an unexpected teary letter snuck through my door mail slot and stained by the good in one of us tricked me into coming.
      I bit my lip as I remembered the nurse who penned the letter telling me that my father had passed away some years earlier. I remember feeling guilty and saddened she knew before I did. Somehow, that was a sacred matter left for children.
      I remembered how insensitive I was when my first concern was how the little 'nightingale' found me. I failed my own rule, never to open official-looking mail. But on that particular sunny day, as an ocean breeze passed through my flowery faded pastel curtains, an odd, somewhat non-professional typeface was delivered by the SRO manager and fell into my room through that filthy brass door slot, landing on my small apartment floor.
      I smelt the burning rag cigar and heard the creaking of the hallway floor slats as three hundred pounds of sweating heart attack paused before slipping the long white envelope through the dirty brass slot.
       It was on this lazy afternoon, a whiskey-sipping cool beach breeze day, that I was enticed out of a wonderfully smooth Irish alcohol fog, just long enough to see that letter drop to the floor.
      I surprised myself that day, at the degree of curiosity that overtook me. I had to set my drink down, get out of bed, walk over, pick the letter up off the floor, and make the return trip; I just had to.
      I glanced at my name and address on the message, as the print was uneven and if you looked closely, you could see where the ribbon had brushed the envelope above and below the print. A half-full fifth of amber liquid told me to let the omen rest on the nightstand for days before ever picking it up again.
      Next to the candle, the parchment cast a warm glow late at night when I could not sleep. Each night, as flashing dim neon showed through my open window, I could barely make out the official-looking pinkish-white envelope in the dark of my small room; now however, after long humid hours of thinking aloud, the whiskey bottle stain that now graced the event somehow ruined the elegance of it.
      Nights passed slowly while my steaming hot SRO room became a haven for feelings and passions who occasionally showed up unannounced. I felt not alone, not my simple irresponsible self, but rather someone who had something important to do, a task that evaded sweaty hours teaming with anxiety.
      Even with rain hitting the window and sirens off in the distance distracting me at every moment, I could see that letter glistening in the neon, I knew exactly where the letter was, it beckoned.
      I had a gut-wrenching feeling about what that letter contained. Finally, after all the wondering, such a simple thing would take me back so far. Return me to a place I abandoned without packing in my haste to leave. For the first time in years, all the youth I escaped came flooding back when my eyes closed.
      I lay in the dark thinking we were never close, my mom and I. I closed my eyes and remembered her delightful laugh and innocence. I remembered how excited she would get, riding in the front seat of that gold tone nineteen fifty-seven Ford, sitting next to Dad when he took us to the beach.
      She would make us the best baloney and mustard sandwiches and pass them around as Dad drove the car ever closer to her favorite place, the beach. We had a contest to see who could smell the salt air first.
      To this day I don't think she ever looked back to see if 'the kids' were watching her be herself. Except for the sandwiches, she was already at the beach. She would forget everything but the sun coming through the windows, the breeze entering through the wind wings, and Dad flying through traffic; hell freeway miles per hour was seventy-five.
      Once we arrived, the magic of warm sand and seagulls calling from above took over. We had plastic fishing poles and big towels we used to sit on; we fished 'for the big one' off Newport Pier until nighttime when Dad would return from Tijuana's Jai Lai games to pick us up.
      After all, I did leave home when I was 13 and never looked back. Surprising are the things you remember when you're not trying. When traveling, I stopped in to visit on my way through, but nothing sensitive, nothing touching. Just a quick Hello. I stayed a few nights until the stranger, the visitor, and the impostor who faintly resembled someone they knew many years ago became suffocating for them.
      They did not know me, and all I could remember was spaghetti dinners and Dad arriving home at 3 a.m., muffled "in the back bedroom" discussions on why he had to work so late. He was at the studio labor pool, "on the bench", hoping they picked him to work that night.
      He was too smart for that work, but it was easy. The simpletons he surrounded himself with provided him with a certain armor. He could fall asleep among the stench of liquor and cigarette butts, and his intellectual defenses were still unfairly above par.
      He liked the edge. I loved him for all he was worth, and so did Mom. His heart broke the day he realized he never fooled his wife. She knew all along he gambled the paycheck, or pocket change trying to jump-start a family of six.
      The anticipation of Dad's arrival each night was addictive. I remember her bundling up with a blanket on the overstuffed chair while watching the small black and white television, hoping he was all right. She would stay awake all night long waiting for the silent night to be interrupted by dogs wagging their tails and running to the front door as their keen hearing knew the Studebaker was pulling into the driveway. She knew all along, he just didn't want to come home a looser again. There was no rush to see her face if his pockets were empty.
       He would spend every penny trying to hit the big one for his family. There was always one more bet. Life was more exciting trying to make something out of nothing for him. When things got easier, like a city job, he would screw it up to give himself a challenge. The redundancy of such a task suffocated him; there was no struggle, no fight to win anything, nothing to overcome.
      To retire from a job with twenty years in, doing the same thing day in and day out would have killed him. Like putting an intelligent animal in a cage, he would have purposefully hurt himself if for nothing other than to overcome the pain.
      Feeding and clothing his family was a pastime, too simple. Clothing, feeding, housing, and loving a family of six, were the other things he had to do before starting another day getting over on normality.
      I remember watching and listening from the passenger's seat as his eyes quickly glanced at the gas gauge, laughing and grinning as the little needle in the gauge dared him to go another mile without refueling!
      The car reeked of gas fumes. As he called it, 'the can' was in the trunk, and the teaspoon of mileage he left in it always evaporated into the passenger compartment. I remember my mother saying 'Jack I think we have some sort of leak'. Don't worry about it Jeannette, it's normal.
      The small red can never tipped over, because it stood just fine in the depression the spare tire was supposed to occupy. Unfortunately, that balled sixties fashion statement was traded a long time ago for twenty more miles of 'Jimmy's fifteen-cent gas.
    I remember how the music made girls cry, and the Temptations gave the world rhythm and made people with nothing feel special. Looking across the room reminded me that, come Friday, everyone laughed and had fun.
      Seeing her smile at those she had never before seen in her life walked by with graciousness. It made me realize how I had forgotten, after all these years, all we kids had to do was get up in the morning and play in the sun. No worries about clothes, food, or a place to feel safe, just 'run the neighborhood' until dark.
      The difference in people was a big thing. The 'surfers' ruled the beaches, and the 'low riders' ruled the valleys. Wingtip shoes and shiny black points were the only two choices. You either rode the waves or cruised the strip. Ed Sullivan was the show to watch and someone's "Baby did the Hanky Panky!"
    The small tree sitting in the corner of the room reminded me how it saddened her to see 'the tree' come down. Christmas was a big thing at our house. Neglect of the Christmas tree saddened her when she forgot to water it. The smell of pine was euphoric to her, and if the 'well' at the base of the tree were to dry out, she would somehow think it was her fault that even if momentarily, our tiny house lost the smell of the forest. She loved all things living.
      I remember watching her one day, as she observed a small bird land on a limb. She watched with the intensity of a newborn. She knew she had a purpose, if for nothing else than to be precisely standing on that spot, to witness that small bird, that little singing life at that precise moment. The bird was talking to her, you know. You could tell by watching her, she was storing that moment in her special place where she hides such moments, to be pulled back out at just the right second to counteract a broken heart. Unconsciously, I think she tried to save one wonderful part of life, for each un-wonderful part.
      To this day, I think she did it. You would never know different as she smiled at you, or gave you that suffocating hug at the end of the day. She was thinking of that bird when Dad came home especially late. She knew he tried so hard. If only he could win just once, if only once.
    There she sat, across the room in some unfamiliar building with clinical white polished floors.
      The letter said every day she sits alone in the great room, thinking Jack will walk through one of those green glass doors with another made-up story, any minute. With another 'big win' in his pocket. The two of them will go out to dinner, or the beach, get some ice cream cones, and sit in the car watching the sunset and talking about how it used to be.
      How they always found some way to survive…..even raising four kids. How things didn't work out quite the way they had envisioned. How the kids all left home early in their lives and moved away. They would wonder and make up stories of why.
      Even though they knew the phone numbers, they never called any of us when they were in dire straits. Talk about how they promised each other they would never be a burden to their children, regardless of the consequences or suffering.
      Like the time Dad was getting operated on in the V.A. hospital and she had to sell the car and live in a 16-foot-long trailer parked in the hospital parking lot. It was those times they swore never to call the kids. The two of them hid their suffering like nothing had happened, and as Dad would say "Sometimes life throws you a few curves, kid".
      That b*****d, why couldn't he just quit, or give up for a week? Instead, there was always that smile, and "Hey kid, what are you doing today?" He waited for a reply from his eleven-year-old boy before heading out the door to work his magic. "Take care of your mother,...... Jeanette, I'll be home late" and off he would go.
       I knew he was reading 'The Form'. He was off to the races, Santa Anita or Hollywood Park. I remember those times were the happiest I had ever seen the man. The bills were paid, Mom was happy and gave him a few extra dollars, the day was a beautiful California sunny day, and Jimmy's gas was seventeen cents a gallon! He was on top!
    I remember one time that lady sitting across the room, the one with the Mona Lisa smile, got a stunning red dress for her birthday. We could hear Dad asking her where she was going to wear it. He said it was pretty, but what good is it?
      The sleepless nights and worry would get the best of him sometimes, and he didn't realize what he was saying. If he had, it would have broken his heart to know the silence in the house that week was because he indiscriminately hurt everyone's feelings. My brother and I mowed lawns with that 'push' lawn mower until we had blisters on our hands as big as marbles to buy that dress for Mom. Unfortunately, he could be a real piece of work sometimes.
      He knew if he had the money to take her out dancing, he'd be at the track. She was always so nice. She could get mad like everyone else, yet she always gave people she didn't know the benefit of the doubt. She was a delightful person in many ways, a pleasant person if given the chance. I was often amazed at hearing her response to certain situations. "Oh, come on, everyone knows that!" She would say. And she was wrong. Her naïveté reflected frightening, if not simplistic logic on occasion.
      Her simple love of life and genuine love and curiosity were shared with people she didn't know, in the neighborhood she was legendary. She didn't want to interact, instead, she wished to watch life from afar.
      Why she stayed with Dad is anybody's guess. If you left out her love of the rogue and insatiable appetite for all things impossible, there was no reason to stay. Wolves would have ripped her apart on her own.
      She never believed her children were smarter than what she heard on T.V. Why should she, it was the T.V. that kept her company all day. The T.V. never came home without the promised paycheck. The T.V. never borrowed more than the next check was worth. The T.V. never needed new clothes.
      We were good for something though; the T.V. never mowed the yard with a push mower or picked the weeds. Those damn California weeds! No water for years, scalding heat, and at times the air was not even moving across the ground; and there in the middle of our yard were big, green weeds! And how about those 'Bullhead' stickers? It was a dare if you played in one of those fields. A little-kid-tough-guy-macho thing.      After a football game, it looked like you were attacked by something. Every trickle of blood, macho!
      Enough stalling, it's time for me to cross the room. The last time I saw her, she graciously hugged me and looked past me to see if her boy was coming down the road. I wonder how long she'll wait for Dad; she doesn't have the dogs now. I wonder what time he'll get home tonight, so I'll have something to say.   The End.