Shouldn't…but Do

Long ago and far away, well over half a century, there were single stores covering half a city block.

Called department stores, they carried several lines of quality goods,  throughout  multi-level shopping spaces.  Sales staff were knowledgeable, well dressed, courteous.  In the basement, the lunch counter served splendid grilled cheese sandwiches, soup and crackers.  There was even a mirrored wishing pond, filled with goldfish and red-eared sliders, in the day before salmonella warnings.  Gilded, solid, expensive and  secretive, it was a  marvelous world.

At Christmas, the department store came alive.  Festooned with every sort of ribbon, dazzling tree and ornament, who could forget the animated Christmas windows and decorations that spilled out down the street and up the lamp posts?

Arriving early this morning at Target – a discount department store of this age – the glimmer of a Christmas aisle caught my attention, reminding me of those days.

I perused the  inexpensive store decorations, neat aisles of every sort of ribbon, wrap and artificial Christmas tree.  I stood for a long time in front of  lit yard decorations – cheery snowmen, bobbing reindeer.

Nostalgia is a longing for encounters that are no more.  Is it longing?  The good old days are never as good as in memory.  Memory, mother to nostalgia,  is a very choosy recorder of encounter.

Encounter – a meeting – the spirit of the times with a spirit passing through.  Memory takes it in and moves us down the line.  From time to time, if  lucky, we may see  a silvered reflection of that encounter, in the ornaments and tinsel of the present,  that evoke the long ago past.

I bought some wrapping paper I thought was nice,  it says Believe.

Sitting in the bathtub, legs drawn up, hands on my feet.  Naked.

Not to worry, it is dim naked, I am inclined to candlelight when alone.

Watching the water go down the drain, wondering why I am all drawn up.  No expansion.

The candle flickers, I could be a million different people sitting in this receding pool of warmth.  Stark.

Of any age, we all get here.  Some never notice, some dwell in it – unvarnished, unadorned humanity.  Flesh, toes, hair – every single one of us –  a collaborative effort between electrical impulse and tissue with a will to live.

Making our way, in a million different places.  Memories, half-sung songs, painful reverie, laughter, crushing disappointment, no thought at all…another flicker, the candle is out, the water has fled down the drain.

The  scent of extinguished candles always reminds me of birthday cakes.

I got a ticket this morning.  It has been over 20 years since I was last pulled over.  Today was the day, disregarding a stop sign to the tune of $120.

Some things have changed since a traffic stop in the 80’s –  large white SUV’s decked out like Christmas trees, instead of those shifty little black and white units.   Changed too is the fact I said nothing but I am sorry, when the officer inquired, quite animated,  as to whether I understood that I blew through the stop sign.

Truth is, while I remember insuring the intersection was clear and empty, I did not even register the stop sign.  I felt this best kept to myself.

Back in the day, I would have made a game effort to talk my way out of a ticket, I was more successful than not.

But these days, all things legal seem dead to me.  Don’t waste your breath, as they say.

Failure to stop.  Not speeding, but disregarding a sign to stop.  I am not going too fast, I just did not see that I should stop.  Trust me, I would like to stop.  I would like it all to stop.  No matter how much I pay in legal fees, I cannot get it to stop.

Funny,  I am a driver  happy to be passed,  who goes the speed limit and  comes to a complete stop at signals on deserted country roads.  I figure someone made the effort to make things a bit safer, and I am good with that.  Path of least resistance sort of thing.

But not today apparently.

The police officer seemed  genuinely taken aback when he came back to give me the ticket and I was attending to my youngest child who was again throwing up in the back seat.   He had not realized my son was sick, that I had been passing him a bucket, watching the intersection and looking for a place to pull over when I rolled past the now infamous stop sign.

I took the ticket out of his hand as he stood there.  He said he was sorry.  I said I was too.

I woke to the fast moving memory of a tornado at 4:40 AM.  Tornado dreams do not bother me as they once did. I have weathered enough of them to know, for me,  they denote rapidly approaching, but generally short-lived trouble.

The event that woke me at 4:40 AM was the weather radio sounding an alarm for a tornado watch.  It took me a minute to puzzle out how the good  folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association  knew what I had been dreaming.  Not a good sign.

A strong gust of wind smacked the house as I flopped back down on the mattress.  Mediation planned all morning with X, a fools errand initiated by me to seek compromise on the upcoming holiday visitation schedule.  Flexibility is not a hallmark of X.

Like many, I find tornadoes compelling.  Borne of instability, they oftentimes defy prediction.  Fastest winds on earth, here and gone,  death and damage by happenstance.  One house standing, one house vanished.  This past summer, a tornado warning found me tucking my children in the closet under our stairs.  Once they were safe, I patrolled my back deck, hoping to spot the trace of a funnel dropping from clouds backlit by lightening at 2:00 AM.

But today, there was no tornado, at least not in the sky.  Mediation failed.  For me and my children, this year will end out as unstable as it began.  The Expensive Lawyer has recommended I cease these communicative efforts given  X’s sadistic delight, as she puts it,  in pursuing control when approached in good faith.

The wind cut electricity to my house during the day,  incapacitating my one good computer.  Energy, time, many words lost.  Reboot in safe start-up mode, wish it worked for humans too.

I dropped my children off at X’s house earlier this evening.  As I left the subdivision, there was Constant Street, toppled.  Wind sheared the street sign off at the base.  A bad sign.

High wind warning for several more days.  Even windy people get blown away.

Four wheels, steel chassis, holds a lot – or a little.  Not a car, a grocery cart.

I like ’em fast myself.  Why shop a big box grocery store if you can’t challenge land speed records on east west aisles astride your cart?  I shop when aisles are clear, never menace a pedestrian.  I am a courteous driver.

Grocery carts have a lot of strength.  Usually metal, some plastic – but those are inclined to break.  People put stuff in them all day, let the cart carry the load, and then drive off without so much as a backward glance.

Grocery carts hold a lot for the nameless shoppers who use them.  Not only hard goods, but the hopes, and fears, carried along on each shopping adventure.   I hope I don’t spend too much, this shampoo will make my hair shiny, I got paid so I can check out the  electronics,  if I take these vitamins, I won’t get sick.  Let’s face it, grocery carts get weighed down, even if  only half-full.  People are like that too.

In the end? Grocery carts return to their corral empty, a mobile,  transient structure waiting to be filled by the next person’s expectations.  Inside a store, a full grocery cart denotes largess, on the street, poverty.  Context counts with carts.

And the  folks who want, who need so much, get home,  find out the shoe doesn’t fit, the colour is wrong, the taste is awful.  They will shop again, maybe with  the same cart – or one that looks like it – and hope things turn out different next time.  Pay your money, take your chances.

Written last week by my 12-year old…

Fear is a master of disguise, an illusionist.

Fear goes around picking on people to make himself look big…although he himself is quite small.

The first time you face something, Fear relies on the unknown.

Humans, by nature, are frightened by the unknown.

It’s like going into the dark closet with the scary monsters for the first time,

You flip on the light, only to find that it’s just a dresser and some sheets.

Fear relies on people not making connections between each other to say – “Don’t be afraid.”

Let’s all just hold that thought.