STRANGERS ON A BENCH

 

 

New York has about a month’s worth of perfect days in any given year. Today was not one of them; high humidity, temperatures hovering in the upper eighties/low nineties, a hazy sky. My refrigerator was looking more and more like Old Mother Hubbbard’s. I was coming to the conclusion there was little time left between me and starvation. That had me having to face leaving the comfort of my air-conditioned home to make the eight block walk up Frederick Douglass in Harlem to our LIDL grocery store. I knew the walk to the store wasn’t going to kill me but the walk back with a bag full of staples like apples and water, things that weigh more than you remember until it’s too late, was going to create a sweaty mess. I’d already sweat stained one of my favorite vests the day before and I wasn’t in the mood to create a new pair of underarm amebic circles of discoloration to another vintage vest. Heat or no heat I dress to over compensate for my physical insecurities. I’m well aware of all the summer rules for how to dress in the heat: no dark clothes, breathable fabrics and nothing tight. Most people would forgo the added element of a vest on a day like this but it’s my signature and nothing much gets in my way of stylishness. It didn’t take me more than walking out the front door of our apartment building and being assaulted by a heat wave to smack me into deciding one block of heat induced torture was about all I was going to be able to handle. There was a bus stop one block away that would cut my food trek down from eight to seven blocks. Even a one block walk in this heat was enough to produce a waterfall of tiny beads of salty sweat to slide from my receding hair line to the catchall of my eyebrows. I was fast becoming heat blind.

The bus shelter had an etched plexiglass roof that shielded the brightness of the sun but did little more. These shelters were better equipped to protect from a burst of rain or snowfall in winter but that was about it. I had brought a book with me, a bit of light reading about a multi-generational saga of two families wrapped up in the life of running a supper club in the north of Minnesota. It flipped back and forth through time and characters, making it best read in one sitting. I was constantly having to remind myself of who exactly was related to who. My heart wasn’t really in it but I’m a focused task reader. No matter how confused or awful I find a book I’ll stick it out until the end hoping the author will change my mind. When I got to the bus shelter and sat on the wooden bench, I was more trying to fend off thinking about the heat while waiting for the M10 to show up than I was enthusiastically trying to find out if Florence had developed a new Old Fashion cocktail recipe.

I was, for the moment, the only one at the stop and maybe four pages further into the supper club saga when I noticed this guy starting to cross Frederick Douglass with a trajectory that seemed aimed at the bus shelter. He was a wisp of a black man not subscribing to any of the hot summer clothing rules. He had on dark pants, the darkness coming mostly from being stained and probably never having been washed. His shoes were none the better, black with the laces missing. He wore a long sleeve t-shirt with purple and green lettering on a field of muted gray saying “NEVER SURRENDER”.

He held a small white paper bag he’d torn open balancing several pieces of what looked like scavenge dinner rolls in one hand. With the other hand he was taking bits of the crumbled rolls and stuffing them into has mouth. Crumbs clung to the straggly beard that surround a set of crocked yellow teeth. There was an undecipherable smile on his face that could have been saying anything from crazy to harmless.

I did my best to avoid eye contact hoping he’d walk by. The backless wooden bench in the shelter was divided with butt divots making room for three people to sit. I had taken the middle seat. He didn’t walk by. He sat down next to me, close enough that our knees could touch. My first instinct was to get up and move but my second was to speed calculate my options before I reacted. There were several options that few through my consciousness, most of them offensive. I could slide over to the further seat. I could get up and stand. I could decide that those remaining seven blocks weren’t really that far to walk or I could stay where I was and continue to bury my face in my book. I did the last option hoping we wasn’t going to engage, start screaming hateful slurs or the most feared of pulling out a knife.

He was oblivious to my trepidation as he started off with, “beautiful day” or at least that’s what I thought he said his mouth still trying to masticate a doughy piece of dinner roll. I kept focus on my book but snatched a side glimpse to catch a smile behind the crumbs.

I countered with “It’s a hot day” hoping this would end the conversation.

“Oh, could be worse” all this said either muffled with food or the result of a neighborhood dialect or possibly the inarticulate pronouncement induced by drugs.

Then he did something I hadn’t expected. He offered me a piece of dinner roll. That’s when I made a decision. Here was someone that no one probably talked to, an invisible human. He was only looking for someone to recognize him. I closed my book.

“No thanks, I just had lunch” Not really true but it was the best I could think to say to not diminish him or have to take a piece of his dinner roll.

He saw an opening and countered with “Mmm, ya know the trashcan is my pantry” It made me laugh and he laughed with me.

“I like the way you look. Them are some fine shoes. You musta been a handsome man when you were young” Flattery will engage me even a backhanded one.

Having noticed my side-eye he followed it up with, “Oh, you still a very nice looking man.” Then he laughed again and it was contagious.

Then we talked about his favorite color: purple, we talked about God and how I had a hard time with organized religion. We talked about happiness. He pulled something out of his pocket. It could have been grass, it could have been crack. I couldn’t tell you what it was for sure but I demurred. He wasn’t offended. He put it back in his pocket and said “Ain’t this a great day?”

He never asked for money. My bus finally came. I would have shook his hand but it was still holding his trashcan pantry find.

Everyday now when I go past that bus shelter right around the corner I look to see if maybe he’d be sitting there. If some day I see he’s there I’ll be the one going to sit down beside him and we can discuss trashcan pantries or the definition of joy.

 

 

THE FAMILY SWIMMER

THE FREESTYLE

I thought I had officially killed this blog but I've realized there are still certain things in our lives that need a forum inappropriate for our pleasantlivinghome blog. One of those things is Emmy. Like many fifteen year-olds she's still searching for who she is and who she wants to become. Unlike both her parents Emmy is beginning to find herself through sports. She has fallen in with a great group of girls whose focus is more on three-point shots from outside the ring, spiking the ball over the net or swimming the 100 meter breaststroke in less than 1.30 minutes. Drugs and alcohol are so uncool and the best date is going out as a group to see a 3D slasher movie.

So now every day of the week we get up at 4:45 so I can get her to her early morning workout before school starts. After school it's back in the pool for another two hours of endurance and skill training. That puts her at school for thirteen long hours every day. I'm worn out by the time Brian Williams starts tell me the Republicans have once again declared global warming is a myth and not taxing the super rich is the best way to put food on the tables of the unemployed. Emmy continues to find extra energy in this grueling routine. Even the weekends have a Saturday morning 6am call on those Saturdays that don't have a scheduled regional or conference meet.
Most of the other eighteen girls on the team have been swimming with swim clubs or on school teams for several years. Emmy's experience comes from taking swimming lessons at the "Y" when she was five and splashing around with her friends in Teagan's pond on sunny summer days in Andes. We weren't much help when it came to getting her prepared for the team. When we got the list of equipment and swimsuit needs we took her to the big sports box store here in Madison where the salespeople barely new the difference between lycra and polyester or the breaststroke and the butterfly. Virtually everything we bought was wrong. At her first conference relay meet every time she jumped in the water her goggles would slip up to her forehead and fill with water. She had a tough time. Luckily one of the other parents told us about a little mom and pop shop on the Westside specializing in swimwear where the lady who runs the shop actually fits each girl with the proper attire and equipment, kinda like Harry Potter going into Ollivanders to be matched with the perfect wand.

Last Tuesday was her first team meet where she had all the proper suits, caps and goggles. She was scheduled for three heats. Her first was a junior varsity 200 meter freestyle relay. She was the lead off swimmer against the Monroe Cheesemakers. She left that Cheesemaker in her wake and the Monona Grove JV girls pulled off a win. Her next heat was the 100 meter breaststroke. She'd never swum the breaststroke so this was going to be a challenge. There were only three girls competing in this heat. She bounded out of the pool in second place, pretty respectable for a breaststroking virgin. Her last heat was the 400 meter freestyle relay. Of the four girls on her relay team Emmy was scheduled to swim third. The first pair of girls mounted their platforms, assumed start positions and they were off. The lead girl for Monona Grove had swum an earlier freestyle event. We knew she was a pretty good freestyler and she proved it. By the end of her 100 she had taken a good half length of the pool lead. When she touched the wall it was the number two girls chance to jump in. Monona Grove's number two girl was a little tiny girl from India. If she weighed in at eighty-five pounds soaking wet I'd be surprised. Shine, that was her name, was not a strong swimmer and that was being kind. She flailed at the water with all her might but by the end of her crawl she not only given up the lead but had fallen behind by almost a full length of the pool. It was Emmy's turn. She dove in. As opposed to Shine, Emmy cut the water with hardly a wake. Her swimming seems so effortless and beautiful. By the time she had finished her first fifty she had cut the Lady Cheesemakers' lead to half a length. The crowd was starting to take notice, especially since her Daddy had started screaming at the top of his lungs, "Go Emmy, Go Emmy!" She kept going. At the end of her third length she had caught up with the competing team. The crowd was screaming and her teammates had lined the pool cheering her on. When she finally touched the wall she had not only caught up but gone ahead by more than half a length of the pool. The final Monona Grove Silver Eagle swimmer finished it off and won the heat but the real winner was Emmy. After the meet she tried to downplay her effort but a little Mona Lisa smile belied her inner ecstasy and we, her parents, couldn't have been prouder.

THE DEATH OF SORENCY

On January 11, 2011 at approximately 10:30 am the Sorency Mobile was taken from this earth. She served us well. Her death was unexpected. While doing her daily chores of carting family members throughout the city she was struck by an oncoming Ferrell Gas Company repair truck. Her face was ripped off like a can of Contadina peeled whole tomatoes. It was a horrible sight, bumpers and headlights strewn over the intersection, the radiator weeping fluids onto the pavement. They took her away on a flatbed tow truck, iron chains securing her broken bones against any further damage in a desperate attempt to get her the care she needed to survive but her vital systems flat-lined somewhere between the scene of the accident and Gray Bahl repair. The insurance agents showed up at our front door hours later to inform us of her demise, the bent Sorency license plate wrapped in a satin blanket.

Funeral services are pending. The family requests no flowers but donations in her name can be made to the National Association of Teal Colored Cars (NATCC).

SHIFTING ENERGY

Today, 1/1/11, marks the launch of our new design/lifestyle blogazine. We've been working very hard at creating content we could share with all our design-curious and design-challenged friends. The writing style will remain personal and chatty with a dash of wit and a definite point-of-view. I hope you all take a look. Our beginning goal is to publish once a week. If you look at our first attempt please forgive all of our technical misfires. We pledged to ourselves we'd publish on 1/1/11 no matter what it looked like and we held to our promise.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Rick and Lee

www.pleasantlivinghome.blogspot.com

HOLIDAY GREETINGS

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM RICK, LEE, EMMY AND BUDDY

May the new year bring all of us the opportunity to find inner peace, enough prosperity to feel safe once again, and a really good pair of slip-on walking shoes with cushioned heels.

THE ROLLERCOASTER

I started this blog with the tag line jesting of already having reached the pinnacle of being over the hill. It was meant as an indictment about how we’re now riding the downside of a rollercoaster and it’s moving at mach speed. The upside of this is the thrill you get with the downward rush, the downside is the ride is over way too quickly. I thought the tag line was a bit tongue in cheek but now I think there is more truth than fiction here. Here are some reasons why:

1. When your fourteen year-old daughter smirks at your hairless calves accusing you of shaving them and you have to explain how several decades of wearing too tight jeans has rubbed the hair of your legs. Nature’s depilatory has finally won out and now my legs are as smooth as an octogenarian’s bottom.
2. When you take-off for the supermarket because you ran out of toilet paper and all you come home with is a box of double cream filled Oreos.
3. When you think Betty White is beginning to look pretty hot.
4. When you realize you haven’t changed your underwear in two days and you don’t care because you know nobody else will.
5. When you can’t read the ticker on your 52” HDTV even with your glasses on.
6.  When the guy next door asks your partner if he can meet his dad and the dad turns out to be you.
7. When you realize you bought your winter dress coat in 1982 and you don’t consider it be vintage.
8. When you walk past a plate glass window and assume the reflection peering back at you is some old homeless person wearing your clothes
9. When you hear Phil on Modern Family refer to WTF as “why the face” and you don’t get the joke.
10. When your partner of thirty years calls you from his colonoscopy and says they found out he has cancer.

FACING THE HOLIDAY BLUES

The harsh fluorescent lights of the Walgreens drugstore made everyone look sick even when they weren’t. It was the Sunday after Black Friday, early evening. She was maybe in her early fifties, dressed in black but very stylish for a Sunday night in the Midwest. Her hair was dyed a soft red, not a brassy color red but the color of faded rose petals. It was unseasonably warm. She wore a black shawl flecked with platinum over a loose black blouse and black Argentinean gaucho pants covering the tops of her high-heeled black boots with the slouchy folds indicative of fine leather. She almost bent down to touch my shoulder but then she walked away, down the aisle of Christmas candy and outdoor lights. I couldn’t get up off the floor. I stayed squatting, my knees bent with my hind end resting on my heels, the box of lights clutched in my hands. I couldn’t believe there were still boxes with the image of our old house in Andes cleaving to the shelves of a Midwest drugstore. Each year I think it’ll be over, that the supply will have dribbled out and a new home will appear on the infinite rows of boxed Holiday lights, a newly crowned symbol of a Merry Christmas. It’s a simple image of icicle lights outlining the eaves of our old house shot with a star filter so the lights seem to twinkle. The picture was taken with a hint of snow on the ground at sunset when the sky seems painted with magenta and deep blue, a huge Douglas fir silhouetted in the background. Our antique white wicker furniture put back on the covered porch completing the vignette. I fight the urge to begin ripping the box apart, my fingers making deep grooves in the cardboard. The holidays bring with them memories, memories that now cut like knives on my attempted recovery. It seems as if hours have gone by. I had only come in to pick up some black and white film so Emmy could finish her photography assignment. I never intended to spend any time here paralyzed on the floor, held captive by a photo. A photo that unfolded like a scrapbook in my mind of past Thanksgivings our friends lined up the back staircase with sated smiles the snow circling around the kitchen windows. Then the harsh image of old toilets lined up across our front yard put there by a neighbor who wanted to see us gone. The joy that house gave us and the pain it had to endure all collided in that unexpected moment over a box of Christmas lights on a shelf in a holiday aisle in a drugstore in the middle of the Midwest. I found the strength to rise from the floor and make my way to the cashier. The lady in black stood ahead of me at the checkout counter. She didn’t look back at me clutching the film I had come in to buy perched on top of a box of holiday lights I couldn’t leave behind nor shake from my memory. It seemed better to purchase the memory and erase one more box from the shelf of regret and wait for a new Christmas where the past is the past.