Chapter Eighteen: It Was A Most Impressive Sight

Dominica is doing somework on her computer.

As time goes by, each new stage of life becomes a little sweeter than the previous one. My childhood through my early adulthood was extremely bitter, hard to swallow and digest, even with a glass of water. From my late twenties through my late thirties I was evolving even further, in that I gradually made the transition from tart to sweet. Passing from one stage of my life to the next, the layers got peeled away. After my early childhood through my first two years of college, the layer known as fear got peeled away. After my last two years of college through my mid-twenties the layer known as pain was peeled away. And after my late twenties to my late thirties, or rather the present, the layer known as anger got gradually peeled away. Now, there is nothing left but the core. The core that is inner peace and contentment within myself.

I awoke from my sleep with my forehead pulsating within, from the sinus pressure. "Uh." I shighed softly while applying my hand to my forehead. After rubbing my forehead a while to alleviate some of the pain, I threw back my covers and gently climbed out of bed.

Staggering into the facilities half asleep, with my one hand massaging my forehead, I opened the medicine cabinet and scanned the second shelf with my eyes until I spotted the brand new, unopened, package containing the bottle of pain reliever. I opened the box, and pulled out the bottle of medicine, and then struggled with the plastic seal when I heard the clanking of my grandmother's walker coming from the hallway. "Anyone in the bathroom?" she asked while knocking on the door.

"Just a minute." I responded in a loud tone, so she could hear me. But she didn't hear me. So I had to repeat myself. Finally, I got the protective plastic seal off of the bottle, twisted the cap gently, and lined up the arrows, before I popped the lid open. Next came the struggle to get the cotton ball out of the bottle. Poking my index finger into the bottle, I somehow managed to work the cotton ball out of there. I tapped the bottle on my hand three times until I got a pill out of it, and then went to the kitchen to get a glass of milk to consume with the medication, as was directed on the instructions of the bottle label, and box which contained the bottle of medication.

Uncle Davis threw back his covers and climbed out of the sofa, while stretching befoe he got up for the morning. "I've got to get ready to go to church." he said while folding his blanket. He then walked into the facilities to get ready.

Walking over to the hall closet, he put on his coat and his boots.

I was sitting on the half sofa in the living room, typing out some poetry onto the computer.

"I'll see you later." Uncle Davis said to me while walking out the side door.

Leaning back on the half sofa, I raised my arms in the air and stretched a little bit. It felt good to get the circulation going in my system, although I was still a little tired. I didn't even remember what I dream about before I got up from my sleep and climbed out of bed that morning, but that's what happens when one wakes in the morning still exhaused, because he or she didn't get a comfortable night's sleep. If only I could remember what I dream about. I thought to myself. The dream or series of dreams, as I'd have sometimes throughout a given night, would have served useful for story material. But, oh well.

After closing my journal containing my hand written notes for my poem, I set it aside, stretched back on the half sofa, and yawned. I then began typing the content for another poem, by putting down on the computer whatever words came into my mind.

"Cool. I've got two more poems completed for the morning. I'm going to close down the computer and type up a poem for page sixteen a little later." I said to myself.

I then typed the first two lines I hapened to come up with, for a poem I intended to compsoe on the next page, typed in the number in the upper right hand corner for page sixteen, saved the material, and took a deep breath, and then logged off the computer.

We all have our soundtracks of life. For me, it's been the music of George LaMond. While listening to his song, Look Into My Eyes, from his album Bad of the Heart, as I lay on the sofa trying to relax, I was distracted by the sounds of the rumbling in my stomach, because all I consumed that morning was a banana, along with a half a cup of milk which I drank with my pain reliever medication.

"How was church?" I asked Uncle Davis, as he walked into the living room to hang up his coat in the living room closet.

'I didn't go to church. I went to the trade show in Grand Rapids." he said while closing the closet door and heading towards the kitchen.

"What do you mean you went to the trade show? You said you were going to church." I asked a little louder from the living room, so he would hear me when he was the kitchen.

"I meant to say that I was going to a trade show." he yelled back from the kitchen where he was making some salad.

Uncle Davis came into the living room with a bowl of salad for himself, headed to his lounge chair, and said, "I made you some salad. It's on the counter in the kitchen."

I was rather disappointed when I checked the email messages that day, because it was all junk mail. I hadn't received any emails from my friends or relatives since the first week of February. Although, I wouldn't say that was entirely true. I did get an email message during the previous week and a half, from a cousin on my mother's father's side of the family, regarding my poetry. He remarked how beautiful he thought my poem, A Song In the Wind, was when he read it.

Uncle Davis received a couple emails the previous week from some friends of his who lived overseas. I also typed some replies, to their email messages, for Uncle Davis, and sent them out for him. He received phone calls from these friends a few days later, thanking him, "for your kind words in your email message you sent us."

I logged off the comptuer and shut it down. Then, I went into the kitchen to get my salad. To my disappointment, Uncle Davis only put lettuce and some blue cheese dressing into a small, green, plastic bowl. So I poured my salad into a plastic container, took out some ham from the refrigerator,
chopped it up, and put then contents into a bowl. I also added some vinaigrette dressing, before I put a lid on the plastic container, and shook up the salad to get everything blended together beautifully.

I had just finished eating my salad, when Aunt Doris walked through the kitchen door with her uniforms, and a bag with a couple hamburgers for Grandma Feldman and me, along with her purse which contained the mail from Grandma Feldman's house. I had received in the mail the book I ordered called Juneteenth, by Ralph Ellison. I took the package inside the living room and opened it with great anticipatoin. It was a beautiful book about the African American culture based on Ralph Ellison's own experiences. He was highly respected African America writer, who suffered in life and worked hard for everything he had. I really admired those qualities in people. Not only that, but I could really relate on some level, in that I too suffered, and had many hardships in my life, even though my hardships and suffering differed from those of Ralph Ellison.

Uncle Davis and I were watching a documentary about Franklin D. Roosevelt. When the narrator mentioned that F. D. R. was standing on a bridge during his youth, I was surprised. "Uncle Davis, how could Franklin D. Roosevelt have been able to stand on a bridge or walk or stand at all, when he had polio? How is that all possible? Judging from the film footage of him I saw in some documentaries many years ago, he was always sitting in a wheelchair." I asked.

"Not when he was younger. The narrator of this particular documentary we are watching on television right now, was talking about when Franklin D. Roosevelt was a young man. He was healthy back then and could walk. He didn't get sick with polio until much later in life." Uncle Davis informed me while keeping his eyes on the television screen.

"Really? I had no idea." I replied with amazement, because I found this little bit of information from him to be impressive.

"Look at Vera. Vera's dress was down over her knees." I heard my grandmother's voice that came from her bedroom all the way into the living room as she spoke to Aunt Doris while showing her a photograph of my mother. Then I heard her say to Aunt Doris with regard to her own siblings and her cousins, "We all played together. I used to play with the boys, mostly, because my sister was mostly hanging around together with the other girl cousins in our family."

Uncle Davis drifted off to sleep when he was watching the documentary on television about the politicians and politics in the United States, and it dealt with satellites the military had during the nineteen sixties. It also dealt with the astronaut who went up into space in 1969, when Neil Armstrong was the first man to step foot on the moon. Since then, a space station had been set up in space where many scientific studies are now conducted by experts. Watching this documentary took me back to when I went to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D. C., back in 1994, which dealt with rockets and space capsules. I was amazed at the enormous size of the rockets. It was a most impressive sight.

Author's Note

What do you think of the dialogue?