HITTING HOME

I heard a story last night about a couple dear to me spending the night on their trailer roof last week out in Village Creek.
Seems the water came through the valley and carried both their vehicles away as well. Whether they scraped, crashed or landed against each other or the shaking, bending trees remains unclear to me, but I can report that the cars both suffered complete, irrepairable damage.
The trailer, tightened up, didn't fill with water. So neither the baby pictures nor their collection of rare, old blues records sang themselves back down to Memphis.
But I’m sure they sat up there wondering whether the objects bearing witness to their shared life were planning on washing their way through the valley and landing in someone else’s yard. Where they would dry in somebody else’s mud, looking like unloved relics of a left-over yard sale.
In all probability, he smoked a cigarette if it wasn’t raining too hard, patted her on the knee and cooed, “It’s all right there, baby.” She was more than likely silent and worried, other than periodically wiping rain drops from the frames of her big, round glasses.
We all know that the objects securing our lives don’t really matter so much, especially held up next to those we love. Yet just this morning, my co-worker spoke of unearthing her high-school-age childrens’ toys. She asked me if Indigo wanted a pair of Playschool roller skates and laughed over her teen-age kids amusing themselves for hours, naming all the dug-up Ninja Turtles.
Asked by her incredulous, mocking kids why she saved some other seemingly ridiculous momentos, all she could spit out was, “Because they remind me of how you were then.”
I’m guessing our possessions to carry bits of who we all are, ready to remind us when needed, since adults spend most days just trying to get through work, kids, school and fights over what’s for dinner. Usually, we’re too busy to look at ourselves and instead, exist from the reflections shown, whether echoed in old furniture or the eyes of others.
At night, I (and Indigo too, more often than not, I confess) sleep in the bed where my maternal grandparents spent their wedding night. It’s certainly not a sensible bed. It’s loud, creaky as my tired shoulders, and too small. Yet I’ll always keep it.
And there’s the so-ugly-it’s-attractive 1940's turquoise vinyl rocker on my back porch. Grandpa bought it for Grandma, during the Depression, when they could least afford it. Grandma thought it was pretty ugly, and it sure didn't match her red couch, but she always kept it.
My Grandma’s dead now, but she still talks to me. Often it’s when I'm doing something I shouldn’t. And sometimes, I’m sad and I close my eyes in that blue chair and can still smell the scent of hugs in her ample, German chest.
Someone told me this week they don’t worry about things until they happen. Sounds good, but it’s not the way I work. I’m a potential ulcer commercial contestant at best and a candidate for demerol at worst.
I suspect it’s the case with many people that the objects solidifying our lives just echo those individuals who lend meaning to each day. And it's not about losing the objects. It’s about losing the people we love so much that we place the fingerprints of their memory on all the things we own.
And when the things are gone, we look at the people, and we say to ourselves, “Oh there you are. I’m sorry I’ve buried you in the laundry or work or my own silence.”
Back to those two on the trailer roof out in Village Creek. They’re a tough unit. And they've got a rare commodity called humor. One day, when it’s no longer so horrific what has happened, when the yard's clean and there’s a car to get to the store with, one will probably start singing a ditty to the other, “Honey, why’d you take me out in the flood, to remind me you loved me so very much...”
Or something like that.