Thoroughly grossed out and embarrassed (knowing that I would have to blog about this eventually), I set the egg beater into a container of water and dumped in some ammonia. I let it soak overnight. Tonight, when I'd had enough of formatting the 28th Word table of incomprehensible research data, I decided: It's time. I grabbed a small handful of toothpicks and set to work.
While I picked and poked at the crevices in the egg beater, I could hear my neighbors carrying on a conversation outside my open kitchen window. I couldn't see them, and they couldn't see me, but the acoustics in the back are perfect for eavesdropping. Susan and Pat live in the house directly behind the Love Shack. They are musicians. Or at least, Pat is. When the weather is good, I see him perched on his porch, strumming a guitar. He seems to be into a sort of folk rock fusion groove. I just made that up. I have no idea what kind of music he plays. He's got long hair and a beard, though, and he wears tight jeans, pointy black boots, and a black leather vest. Maybe you can figure it out.
Susan was talking with a male visitor about a plant in her yard. A car engine was rumbling. Suddenly, I heard the voice of Roger, the neighbor to the east of Pat and Susan.
“I really liked your music!” he said enthusiastically. “It reminds me of some guys I knew in college.”
Susan's visitor murmured something I couldn't hear. Roger went on, “Yeah, the guitar player quit the band and started growing organic vegetables, or something. You gotta remember, I'm 68 years old. We were all hippies back then.”
Susan must be in her 40s. I imagine to her Roger seems like a decrepit old man. I finished one side of the egg beater and flipped it over. The dishwater was cloudy with gross black specks.
Roger's voice echoed across the driveway. “The drummer, though, the drummer just disappeared. They went to his house and found it was empty, no clothes, no furniture, everything, just gone.”
Susan's visitor said something in response. She lives in a cute little house. I saw the inside once, before she and Pat moved in. Before Roger moved into the next little house in the row. I frequently see him tending to his many potted plants. For some reason, he rarely acknowledges my presence, even when we are within ten feet of one another. I don't understand that.
“But hey, I really liked your music!” Roger repeated loudly. I finished cleaning the egg beater. Susan's visitor got into his car and drove away.
Cleaning my egg beater is a sign. I'm regretting the past and trying to control the future. Some significant endings are bearing down on me: my mother, my car, my apartment, my lifestyle. Nothing stays the same forever, I know. But I'm worried at the prospect of change. I used to think I welcomed change—why else would I be a chronically malcontented pot stirrer? But now I think I'm just like most of the other people on the planet: terrified of losing what I have or not getting what I want. It's just plain old self-centered fear.
It's spring in P-town. Everything is blooming (including my sinuses). I have another paper (18,000 words) to edit after I finish the one I'm working on (32,000 words). I would like to get off this bus, but I don't know how.
Next week, Mom and I are touring another retirement place. Neither one of us thinks it would be a good fit. I think she wants the fancy place on the bluff over the river, the one with the gazillion dollar buy-in. She said, “I can sell the condo.” And she's right, she could sell the condo. On what she has left, she could survive maybe five years, if nothing went wrong. Maybe that is the best option when you reach 85. Put it all on red and let it rip. You don't know how long you have left. Might as well enjoy it while you still can.
Meanwhile, she's offloading the 55 years of crap her four kids gave her...back onto her four kids. Last week, the bed in the spare room was covered with four stacks of photos, homework, and other mementos of childhood. One stack for each kid. I'm lucky, I got to take my bag of old pictures, photos, and poems with me, because I live nearby.
My mother kept just about everything, it seems. There are mementos from just about every milestone in my life: high school graduation, college graduation, letters, long-forgotten photos of me and former boyfriends. She kept a tattered piece of notebook paper on which I had very carefully written in a childish scrawl, “Captain Robert Gray sailed into the mouth of a big river. He named it the Columbia.” There is even a plaster imprint of my kindergartener-sized hand. My mother kept everything. Which is why it is painful to see her letting it all go. I know every ending is followed by a new beginning. But apparently I don't like change.
I do like my shiny clean egg beater, though. Obsessions and compulsions may be underrated.
