Even Manny the obese and blind puggle, sick in his own right with crusty gunk seeping out of his left eye, was losing patience. He uncoiled himself from the foot of the bed and marched up to our pathetic heads, whimpering. Time to make the donuts. I think that's what he was trying to say. We buried our faces in the pillows. It sucks being sick, especially when everyone around you is sick too. Even under the best of circumstances, I doubt either my daughter or my dog would be running to make me chicken soup or refill my tea or plump up the germ infested bedding as it starts to have a life of its own around me. My daughter I can understand; it was only a few days ago that I put on my well worn Nurse Ratched cap and told her to buck up and stop whining. The dog, on the other hand, gets my undivided attention and unconditional love and an extra helping of cookies at the first sign of a hunger pang, much less a sniffle. He owes me.
It's May, for goodness sake. Dreary April showers should be behind us, and it's almost time, according to even the most antiquated rules of fashion, to wear white. The unofficial start of summer is mere weeks away, the season of gazpacho not chicken soup, yet the weather outside is frightful and my house has become a petri dish. They say you can't fight Mother Nature, but that doesn't mean you can't try, which is why I guzzled some meds and grabbed a jumbo box of tissues this morning and headed down to the basement to do some spring cleaning. This is the season of new beginnings, and I am determined to toss the old shit away, no matter how lousy I feel and no matter how much it appears as if it's about to snow.
Ugh. It's amazing how much stuff a family can accumulate in nineteen years. Odd that most of the family members have left the building but all their crap is still here. I promised myself I'd be ruthless, and I got a pretty good head of steam going. My housecleaning triage was acquiring a nice rhythm as I gathered together the keepers in one pile and beat away oppressive sentimentality as best I could with our MLB miniature bat collection (definite keepers) and tossed almost everything else into opaque Hefty bags. I dragged heavier items into the crawlspace, things I could not fit into the bags and would tend to later. The basement began to look like the room we had turned it into years ago, when the kids were small. A wide open indoor space. A place to relax and play games and watch television. As happy as a place can be when the only natural light comes from partially underground grated windows.
The ping pong table stopped me dead in my tracks. In all the trips I've made downstairs in recent months, I hadn't even noticed the ping pong table. By the time I saw it this morning, Cal the handyman had arrived to rehang some closet doors and replace some ceiling tiles. He marveled at the progress I had made, particularly in light of the hacking cough he had been forced to listen to for a good part of the previous day. He was telling me about how I should sell some of the bigger items on eBay. I was nodding and mumbling in agreement, knowing full well I'd never get around to that. "Like the ping pong table," he was saying. Yes, like the ping pong table. My head bobbed in absent minded affirmation of his logic.
"LIKE THE PING PONG TABLE?" I looked at him as if he had suggested I involve my first born child in some sleazy interstate sex trade, which, as those of you who have kept up with my antics in the past few months know, I have already done, and frankly, as you also know, it was no big deal. But the ping pong table, the thing that, up until an hour earlier, had been buried under piles of rubble for as long as I can remember, now that is a big deal. When my father was dying, he insisted on ordering us that ping pong table, because kids should have one. Kids who have a basement anyway. I don't think he ever made it out here to see it, but I have always thought that table to be sacred. Well, except for the years when it was buried under piles of rubble and I didn't think of it at all. But in sight, in mind, and it is indeed sacred. I would never involve it in some sleazy interstate sex trade, or, worse still, sell it on eBay.
I told Cal I couldn't possibly do it, and he gave me that look folks give people who are insane. "You have to," he told me. "There's no other option." I gave him my best of course you're right and I'm just kidding look, and dabbed at my eyes with a tissue. Hopefully he assumed it was mucous, not tears. He must have, because he went on a bit, pointing out all the other items I could add to my eBay list. As usual, I nodded and mumbled in agreement, bobbing my head in absent minded affirmation of his logic.
But, truth be told, my mind was racing. Already uncertain as to how I will even fit the MLB miniature bat collection in my new digs, I am in a complete quandary about the ping pong table. I sure hope the double wide has a nice sized breakfast nook.
Mother Nature has always been a little tricky with me in May, and I've had a handful of rough ones, particularly fifteen years ago when my father died. But in all that time, he's been with me, a sacred presence while I sort through things, even when thoughts of him get buried by all sorts of other crap. The table stays.
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