Friday, September 4, 2009

Stream of ...

It's Friday night, and here I am again...as Ginsberg said, "vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines..." Well, at least not of "China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,"*

My husband and I chat via Yahoo...I at home, he at work in Philly, from this awful job he has that I meet with great ambiguity. In this economy, it's a job...but with his hours, noon til nine Monday through Friday, an hour commute in each direction, and mine, 6:45 am til 3:15 pm every Thursday, and every other Monday and weekend, well, we are lucky to have dinner together four nights a month. Did I mention he has children from a previous marriage who either live with us (she's seventeen. What more does one have to say about a kid than she (or he) is seventeen?) or occupy our occasional weekends as well? And that his 81 year old parents live with us? And the cats...let's not forget the three cats - Moishe, Pippin and "no name yet." Did I mention I'm 50 and feeling ancient? I get even for it all by having as many of my six grandchildren stay with us for the summer. This year we had three of them stay. Ha. Trouble with that was, everyone here loves them. Some revenge.

Perhaps my "stream of consciousness" should become unconscious.

What scares me is that this is the best my life has ever been. I hear you saying to yourself now, "what kind of life has she lived until now?" Perhaps a far less complicated life...but when all is said and done at the end of my day, at the end of life, my worst regret may well be having let Jesus walk in the snow. Not bad for an atheist.

I miss walking down long hot city streets in the summer, where I can almost hear the humidity hitting the asphalt in spittles and sizzles, like a bead of water dropped on a hot griddle. I miss my kids. I miss that less than $100.00 worth of subway fare can get me ANYWHERE in the five boroughs, and for a little more, I can travel far beyond that by train, and that all the while I am traveling, I can sleep, read, chat with some interesting stranger - and never have to pay attention to much beyond where my stop is. I miss that every once in a while, I just might bump into someone famous - like Steven Tyler, or Tim Robbins, or Christopher Lloyd, and how much that always impresses my friends in Connecticut.

So, in suburbia, I suffer ennui. I get up every morning, usually before anyone else. Sometimes my husband gets up before I. Whoever is up first pads down two half flights of stairs and starts the coffee brewing, retrieves the newspaper from the driveway (unless it's raining, where it inevitably lands on the lawn, just to keep it interesting. I swear this is how the delivery guy (no kid, he drives around in a black SUV) gets even because my father-in-law gets the paper by subscription but never sees fit to give this guy a tip during the holidays - and quite honestly, I have mixed feeling about that too. I mean, I'm a nurse. I hold dying people in my arms when their family isn't there, and I don't get a tip. I do it because I give a damn that someone holds you when you're dying. But I digress. Then there's the recycling that it seems no one else can manage to bring to the big blue bucket at the back of the house. My husband usually empties the glass and cans, but leaves the newspapers for me. The cats weave around feet until they are fed and given fresh water. I start laundry. My husband heads for the computer.

We started gardening this year. When we bought this big house, the one we moved into with the kid, three cats (not the same three that we have now), and his parents, a year ago, there was this ugly rotting woodpile in the back yard. It extended from one side to the other, and down about a quarter of the side. Every week, my husband would throw as much as a bucket or two would hold, and drag it to the curb. Bonus for living in this neighborhood is the city trash accepts yard waste. So, in a year, it was gone. We tilled, and began to plant. I have a friend in Connecticut whose garden inspires me. While I know mine will never rival his, I also know whatever we do here is a vast improvement. So, I garden. It ameliorates the ennui. I get to be alone for a while as I pluck the weeds from the soil. I get to curse that if my husband and I don't do it ourselves, it just don't get done. But the garden yielded a lovely crop of Heirloom tomatoes, with the bonus of instantly being four years old again, sitting in my grandmother's garden with tomato juice dribbling down my chin when I took that first bite.



* HOWL by Allen Ginsberg, c 1956, 1959, in it's 57th printing.