Notes from Maine - 2023/03/05
It’s winter again. A couple of weeks ago, I thought we had skated right through into spring. Then, since last weekend, we received several small storms that were capped off with about a foot of snow yesterday. Across the street the snowmobiles are buzzing—angry mosquitoes. I was invited to go over and try out the new jump they built.
“No. I would die,” I messaged back. It was only a joke—that’s not really the reason I didn’t want to go. The reality of my eventual death doesn’t phase me much. But living with self-inflicted pain is a bummer, so I try to steer clear of it. Also, speed doesn’t thrill me. My sister rented a Wave Runner twice one vacation. My brother has all these machines built to go fast. Rollercoasters are fun I suppose, but that’s more about heights I think. I don’t know—I’m not sure I understand the excitement behind going fast anymore, if I ever did.
Made it through another February. I don’t know why that month always seems like such a chore. At the beginning of March, seeing the light at the end of winter’s tunnel, it’s time to lament that I barely touched any of my winter projects. Last fall, I lined up several fun chores that had to be done inside. There are closets to finish and a room that needs to be cleared of all its furniture. I’ve been busy with other things. The calendar keeps flipping. My accomplishments don’t align with my goals, so I keep churning without feeling like I’ve done anything. Maybe the secret would be to align my goals with my current obsessions.
I keep thinking about taxes. My own returns are simple enough that I can just set aside a couple of hours and work them out. But this year I have to get Dad’s final taxes done. For the past few years, we’ve used a tax preparer and I should have called last week. I’ll do it tomorrow. I must have all the papers I need by now. It’s just a matter of collecting them up.
My brother is almost done fixing up Dad’s house. The walls are fixed and painted, the kitchen looks wonderful (in comparison), and the bathrooms have had facelifts. Once the floors are refinished, I think it will go on the market. Feels like he only owned that home for a brief period, but it was about twenty-five years. I suppose that is brief, depending on how you look at it. But if you consider how many families of mice lived in the basement, or how many generations of snakes preyed on those mice, it has been forever. If you’re in the market for a house in Maine, please know that teams of pest control professionals have labored to rid the house of all those mice and snakes. It’s perfectly clean now!
One time my sister was staying at Dad’s, using the desk in the basement to work from.
She called me. “Dad collects snake skins?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “Where did you find them?”
“They’re just winding through the cables behind his printer.”
No, those snake skins collected themselves.
Again, teams of professionals have solved the rodent/serpent problem. Shop with confidence!
I’ve told all these stories before, I’m sure. I wrote a pretty accurate account of Dad’s house in my book Elder. Maybe I exaggerated a little, but not a lot. It’s important to repeat autobiographical stories—I learned that from my grandmother. Through repeated tellings, the stories boil down to just what’s important. Extraneous details fall away or become embellished until they become crucial to the narrative. There was a story about how she packed up her teenage sons and their Irish Setter (Rusty) and drove from Massachusetts to San Francisco so they could take a long boat ride across the Pacific to meet up with Grandpa in Japan. I would love to hear that one more time. There was a one-armed elevator operator in a hotel who always made an appearance when she told the story.
I mentioned that elevator operator in an email that I sent on July 4, 2021. I talked about the snakes in Dad’s house on February 13, 2022. I repeat myself too, but I can hit the search button and find out when. I better go out and shovel before the snow turns to cement.
