Family Plan
Sep. 8th, 2014 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraWho knew that Lawrence Ferlinghetti was still alive?
And yet apparently, he is:
The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where i first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum
Outside the leaves were falling as they died
A wind had blown away the sun
A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room
Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!
###
I spent the weekend in a depressive state. No amount of walks, pleasant socializing, or mindless historical novels about forgotten Plantagenet princesses could rouse me from it.
I’m scrambling to put together the $$$$ I’ll need for plane tickets to New Mexico, and that means copywriting, boring, mind-numbing work. Considering all the other, even more horrible, mind-numbing work options that are out there, I suppose I’m lucky to have this one as a fall-back.
And yet, and yet, and yet…
Writing all that awful empty prose that only functions as a placeholder for Internet search rankings really reminds me of how futile and meaningless life is. My life. But your life too, come to think of it.
I’ve kept my two boys and myself on an ATT family plan for more than a decade now.
Max hates ATT. Gets lousy reception in Berkeley.
“But it’s a family plan,” I told him over our lousy phone connection.
“So?”
“Well,” I said carefully. “That means so long as we’re on the same phone plan together, we’re still a family.”
Max laughed. “Mom, that’s ridiculous.”
“Well, yes. I know it’s ridiculous.”
“But it’s also really, really sad –“
Well, yes. I know that, too.
Sometimes I think about the family I’ve lost, and it makes me so sad that all I can do is weep. Yeah, yeah, yeah – I would have lost them anyway even without the socioeconomic upheaval that overturned my life.
Because kids grow up. My boys grew up.
All weekend long, I felt myself haunted by memories of Max and Robin as children. One particular afternoon at Lake Merritt with Judy and her two sons, Joshua and Jeremy. Max would have been – what? Six? Seven?
Must have been just around this time of year because the rays of the sun were long and golden. Autumnal.
The five of us walked around the geodesic bird cage where they used to keep exotic birds. Looked for the queen in the bisected beehive. The boys tried to climb the cork trees; then we strolled around the lake, feeding stale bread to the ducks.
What I remember most about that outing was how oppressed I felt during it. A single mother incredibly weary with her life. Pretending to enjoy it. Trapped in a reality that would never end.
But it did end, of course, so that now it’s a throwaway scrap of memory, most likely a memory that nobody else bothered to store. I wonder why I stored it?
###
I remember Judy, Joshua and Jeremy so vividly. Mihail, her husband, their father, was infected with wanderlust. Shortly after that afternoon, he quit his high-paying job, and somehow persuaded Judy to pack up the boys on a small sailboat for a round-the-world adventure. They sold their house to finance it. Somewhere in Malaysia, Jeremy was hit by a bus and almost died. They had to come back to the U.S. as paupers in thrall to the U.S. healthcare system. Mihail sent 1,000 unsolicited job applications out, hoping to snag another project manager job. The 1,001st job application landed him an interview and eventually a job –which is some kind of cautionary moral tale, no? Mihail had that kind of persistence. When he was a very young man and Hungary was still deep in the shadow of the U.S.S.R., he’d managed to escape to the West by swimming across some body of water on a moonless night.
Judy is still a FB “friend,” and I looked up Joshua and Jeremy the other day. Handsome young men! None the worst for wear, apparently.
###
Anyway. It would give me such pleasure to spend time with Max and Robin on the national holiday devoted to gluttony and Hallmark happiness.
And I have a number of pleasant adventures planned for this week, which should kick me out of my nihilistic mindset. Plus I'm incredibly fortunate to be living in close proximity to Linda who has the best vibes on the planet, sunny, optimistic. She has an enormous amount of what I can only categorize as grace.
And yet apparently, he is:
The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where i first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum
Outside the leaves were falling as they died
A wind had blown away the sun
A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room
Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!
###
I spent the weekend in a depressive state. No amount of walks, pleasant socializing, or mindless historical novels about forgotten Plantagenet princesses could rouse me from it.
I’m scrambling to put together the $$$$ I’ll need for plane tickets to New Mexico, and that means copywriting, boring, mind-numbing work. Considering all the other, even more horrible, mind-numbing work options that are out there, I suppose I’m lucky to have this one as a fall-back.
And yet, and yet, and yet…
Writing all that awful empty prose that only functions as a placeholder for Internet search rankings really reminds me of how futile and meaningless life is. My life. But your life too, come to think of it.
I’ve kept my two boys and myself on an ATT family plan for more than a decade now.
Max hates ATT. Gets lousy reception in Berkeley.
“But it’s a family plan,” I told him over our lousy phone connection.
“So?”
“Well,” I said carefully. “That means so long as we’re on the same phone plan together, we’re still a family.”
Max laughed. “Mom, that’s ridiculous.”
“Well, yes. I know it’s ridiculous.”
“But it’s also really, really sad –“
Well, yes. I know that, too.
Sometimes I think about the family I’ve lost, and it makes me so sad that all I can do is weep. Yeah, yeah, yeah – I would have lost them anyway even without the socioeconomic upheaval that overturned my life.
Because kids grow up. My boys grew up.
All weekend long, I felt myself haunted by memories of Max and Robin as children. One particular afternoon at Lake Merritt with Judy and her two sons, Joshua and Jeremy. Max would have been – what? Six? Seven?
Must have been just around this time of year because the rays of the sun were long and golden. Autumnal.
The five of us walked around the geodesic bird cage where they used to keep exotic birds. Looked for the queen in the bisected beehive. The boys tried to climb the cork trees; then we strolled around the lake, feeding stale bread to the ducks.
What I remember most about that outing was how oppressed I felt during it. A single mother incredibly weary with her life. Pretending to enjoy it. Trapped in a reality that would never end.
But it did end, of course, so that now it’s a throwaway scrap of memory, most likely a memory that nobody else bothered to store. I wonder why I stored it?
###
I remember Judy, Joshua and Jeremy so vividly. Mihail, her husband, their father, was infected with wanderlust. Shortly after that afternoon, he quit his high-paying job, and somehow persuaded Judy to pack up the boys on a small sailboat for a round-the-world adventure. They sold their house to finance it. Somewhere in Malaysia, Jeremy was hit by a bus and almost died. They had to come back to the U.S. as paupers in thrall to the U.S. healthcare system. Mihail sent 1,000 unsolicited job applications out, hoping to snag another project manager job. The 1,001st job application landed him an interview and eventually a job –which is some kind of cautionary moral tale, no? Mihail had that kind of persistence. When he was a very young man and Hungary was still deep in the shadow of the U.S.S.R., he’d managed to escape to the West by swimming across some body of water on a moonless night.
Judy is still a FB “friend,” and I looked up Joshua and Jeremy the other day. Handsome young men! None the worst for wear, apparently.
###
Anyway. It would give me such pleasure to spend time with Max and Robin on the national holiday devoted to gluttony and Hallmark happiness.
And I have a number of pleasant adventures planned for this week, which should kick me out of my nihilistic mindset. Plus I'm incredibly fortunate to be living in close proximity to Linda who has the best vibes on the planet, sunny, optimistic. She has an enormous amount of what I can only categorize as grace.
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no subject
Date: 2014-09-08 05:31 pm (UTC)