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I like driving through residentials late at night. Especially out here, where the landscaping and architecture get wierd the further up a hill you climb. Terraces and garages and decks everywhere, lit from inside with the small lights that people leave on while they sleep so the children aren't afraid and so they themselves don't wrack out shins on furniture in the dark. All tucked into little niches in the curve of a roughly paved road--rough, so that when it ices over in winter, it's not guaranteed suicide to drive on, just an attempt. I like looking into the bones of the edifices that line the lane at the structure of the rooms within, seeing where the owners put furniture. What they turn their sofas to face, a fireplace or a TV or a stereo or art or what. Where they put lamps. Whether there's anyone there at this hour. I like the silhouettes of the front porch railings against the windows. Makes them feel a little more like homes instead of real estate. More like a neighborhood than a zone. I don't know if this makes me a voyeur or just an observer. I do know that it makes the cops nervous.
)O(
The Alpha Bitch of my larger-than-it-looks-at-first Pack is dying. I feel confident in referring to her this way--she's heard her children (by birth and choice) howl, she's fed them, she's maintained haven and kept an open door. She nipped them when they needed it, took very little shit from anyone. And she's got a canted enough sense of humor that she'd see past the words to the meaning and probably grin, ask if that meant I thought my friends were raised by wolves. This family I've adopted really have one thing in common, and it's her. To them, she's Mom. I'm not sure I've heard her given name before tonight.
We gather in the waiting room and the hall outside it, because her Pack is too big to fit in one room, and the only reason we didn't clog the hallway any worse than we did was because we weren't all there who might've been. In the halls, people are catching up--some of them haven't seen eachother in years--and telling stories from the time they've spent apart, and from when they were playing D&D in her basement.
One of her sons looked round at the knot of people nearest him and murmured, "Damn. Anyone got a DM's guide?"
"It's at the apartment," I answered quietly, smiling a little and swaying with Dae in my arms. "But I can go get it if you want."
He laughed. Which was the goal. I don't think Mom would have a lot of time for tears.
Two conservatively-dressed women of the generation of people who dress for occasions such as hospital visits and airplane trips emerge from the ICU entryway and find John, hug him, grip his elbow. "I know you've probably heard this over and over, but if you need anything. Especially at a time like this, cooking... You call us, alright? I don't know how you're doing for food, but if you want for anything..."
"I think we're set up alright, but thank you, I'll remember you."
They chat a while longer, sharing memories of his mother, and I smile again at the scope of this woman's sphere.
All the stories that're flying happened when Mark was 19 to about 23 or so, if I've got my timeline right. That I know them at all is a minor miracle owed to listening to as many of the crew ramble at once as I could. Because when this lot was gaming in Mom's basement, I was somewhere in the viscinity of five years old. Normally this isn't a gap I feel. Only when Hawk starts a lecture on the History of Anime and how he was one of the first pizza delivery guys in Tullahoma. But tonight, as close as I feel to the people here, the fact remains that I'm the next best thing to an outsider, looking at the bones of people's thoughts through their eyes, and wondering what sort of personality arranges things just that way.
Mark comes back from Mom's room. John raises his eyebrows at me. I hand Dae off to Mark and go.
The woman clinging by tubes and IVs to air and breath is and is not the opinionated, sharp eyed woman I'd met before. Before, it didn't matter that chemo had taken her hair and she was breathing with a tank--she held court and didn't miss a nuance or a knuckle. Now... she's still holding court...but it's out in the hall. And she's in here, gasping and hanging on. I wish to God I knew what would set her mind at ease. I wish I could take whatever pain they're dosing her against. There're no meds at this point. Treat one thing, encourage the other, or induce accidental anaphylaxis. No meds. Just painkillers.
What is there to say?
Kiss her forehead.
Whisper "Thank you for pulling this lot together; they've been my sanity."
Hug her daughter.
Go.
And for gods' sake, don't cry.
Because for all of this, there's only really one thought in my head, and it's small and it's egocentric and I don't want to look at it because it'll hurt. It is this:
What'm I going to do when it's Mark in that bed? How do you survive that?
)O(
Outside, I'm blotted dry and efficient. Scratch backs. Hug people. Don't look. Gather up my boys, say our goodbyes and go home.
"Hey babe?"
"Yeah, Jess?"
"Could you drive around a while on the way back? Maybe the boy'll conk out."
"I guess."
)O(
Look...
It's like you're standing in the window
Of a house nobody lives in
And I'm sitting in a car across the way
Let's just say
It's an early model Chevrolet
Let's just say
It's a warm and windy day
You go and pack your sorrow
The trash man comes tomorrow
Leave it at the curb and we'll just roll away.
~Jackson Browne, from "The Late Show",
Late for the Sky, 1974
)O(
The Alpha Bitch of my larger-than-it-looks-at-first Pack is dying. I feel confident in referring to her this way--she's heard her children (by birth and choice) howl, she's fed them, she's maintained haven and kept an open door. She nipped them when they needed it, took very little shit from anyone. And she's got a canted enough sense of humor that she'd see past the words to the meaning and probably grin, ask if that meant I thought my friends were raised by wolves. This family I've adopted really have one thing in common, and it's her. To them, she's Mom. I'm not sure I've heard her given name before tonight.
We gather in the waiting room and the hall outside it, because her Pack is too big to fit in one room, and the only reason we didn't clog the hallway any worse than we did was because we weren't all there who might've been. In the halls, people are catching up--some of them haven't seen eachother in years--and telling stories from the time they've spent apart, and from when they were playing D&D in her basement.
One of her sons looked round at the knot of people nearest him and murmured, "Damn. Anyone got a DM's guide?"
"It's at the apartment," I answered quietly, smiling a little and swaying with Dae in my arms. "But I can go get it if you want."
He laughed. Which was the goal. I don't think Mom would have a lot of time for tears.
Two conservatively-dressed women of the generation of people who dress for occasions such as hospital visits and airplane trips emerge from the ICU entryway and find John, hug him, grip his elbow. "I know you've probably heard this over and over, but if you need anything. Especially at a time like this, cooking... You call us, alright? I don't know how you're doing for food, but if you want for anything..."
"I think we're set up alright, but thank you, I'll remember you."
They chat a while longer, sharing memories of his mother, and I smile again at the scope of this woman's sphere.
All the stories that're flying happened when Mark was 19 to about 23 or so, if I've got my timeline right. That I know them at all is a minor miracle owed to listening to as many of the crew ramble at once as I could. Because when this lot was gaming in Mom's basement, I was somewhere in the viscinity of five years old. Normally this isn't a gap I feel. Only when Hawk starts a lecture on the History of Anime and how he was one of the first pizza delivery guys in Tullahoma. But tonight, as close as I feel to the people here, the fact remains that I'm the next best thing to an outsider, looking at the bones of people's thoughts through their eyes, and wondering what sort of personality arranges things just that way.
Mark comes back from Mom's room. John raises his eyebrows at me. I hand Dae off to Mark and go.
The woman clinging by tubes and IVs to air and breath is and is not the opinionated, sharp eyed woman I'd met before. Before, it didn't matter that chemo had taken her hair and she was breathing with a tank--she held court and didn't miss a nuance or a knuckle. Now... she's still holding court...but it's out in the hall. And she's in here, gasping and hanging on. I wish to God I knew what would set her mind at ease. I wish I could take whatever pain they're dosing her against. There're no meds at this point. Treat one thing, encourage the other, or induce accidental anaphylaxis. No meds. Just painkillers.
What is there to say?
Kiss her forehead.
Whisper "Thank you for pulling this lot together; they've been my sanity."
Hug her daughter.
Go.
And for gods' sake, don't cry.
Because for all of this, there's only really one thought in my head, and it's small and it's egocentric and I don't want to look at it because it'll hurt. It is this:
What'm I going to do when it's Mark in that bed? How do you survive that?
)O(
Outside, I'm blotted dry and efficient. Scratch backs. Hug people. Don't look. Gather up my boys, say our goodbyes and go home.
"Hey babe?"
"Yeah, Jess?"
"Could you drive around a while on the way back? Maybe the boy'll conk out."
"I guess."
)O(
Look...
It's like you're standing in the window
Of a house nobody lives in
And I'm sitting in a car across the way
Let's just say
It's an early model Chevrolet
Let's just say
It's a warm and windy day
You go and pack your sorrow
The trash man comes tomorrow
Leave it at the curb and we'll just roll away.
~Jackson Browne, from "The Late Show",
Late for the Sky, 1974
