prev the grumpy carrot next
2004-03-17 | 7:26 a.m.

This morning I dreamed that my five-year-old, Jinx, was sentenced to a month in jail for jaywalking. Take it from me--a month can feel like an eternity when your kindergartner is in jail.

***

Writing this in Wordpad (the indignity!) because our computer had some sort of aneurysm burst last week and Duff had to re-install everything. Except he can't find everything we had before. Because that's the way our life is.

Went to Leo's memorial service with Frank and Fiona last weekend. Three hours of tributes. We were sitting on somebody's idea of a joke, apparently: a couch that was two-thirds longer in the seat than in the back. I sat there in my mandarin collar and cropped pants, in which I had hoped to look vaguely sophisticated, with my feet straight out in front of me, unable to reach the floor, like Lily Tomlin's Edith Ann. I felt like such an idiot. I wish I could tell Leo about it; I think he'd crack up.

By the time it was over I was tired, enervated, and grumpy, though I'm still not sure why I was so grumpy. Maybe it was that all these other people had spent more time with Leo than I had. Maybe it was that I was in a room full of wonderful, kind people who, even if you added them all up, wouldn't make one Leo. Maybe it was that I suspected not one-sixteenth of that number would be at my own funeral service, because I am not the friend Leo was. Still, there were people I expected to see who weren't there.

Frank and Fiona seemed to think that I should have been invited to speak. Maybe. I don't know. They were especially annoyed that a particular professor from the department had spoken, though she hadn't known Leo well at all. Maybe I ought to have been invited to speak, by rights, but of course if I had been invited, I might well have declined. Because I know I couldn't have done it without sobbing. Nobody else sobbed.

And yes, I did cry during the speeches. Propped up on that silly sofa like a baby doll, like a carrot, I could see the tears splashing onto the slim black purselet I had stuffed my cash and ID into moments before leaving Frank and Fiona's. I didn't want to take my usual gaping maw of a mother's purse. I didn't want to wear my usual comfort shoes, either, so I wore those "pewter" Hera sandals I got finally found at Nordstrom Rack last year, except I ended up slipping them off after a few hundred feet and walking barefoot. You can take the girl out of the country but you can't make her behave like a civilized person.

prev archive next
1 comments