Measures & Silences
It's the silence which gets us in the end. Our own and others. Absence of sound, sight, smell makes us miss them more than imagined and makes us scared of ourselves.
Once a month, when we’re able, I have lunch with my mother. Yesterday was one of those days.
I chose a restaurant downtown in Dust Meridian. It was once a hip place with good branding and better food. The bartender knew what she was doing and the whole place had a vibe. It was our favorite restaurant in town for a long stretch.
But, today, new owners have missed the mark on this version. The menu fare strays from burgers and hotdogs to General Tao's chicken and fresh snow crab. It's less vibe and more chimera of taste. No matter, it's just lunch for us. A mother and her blue-eyed boy.
Across the street loomed Big Blue, a former 1920's bank with clad in 1960's blue porcelain steel. A landmark in Dust Meridian, now half-patched with plywood.
Fading glory, like a lot of us.
12:45 PM. I arrived early, unusual for me. But I had some reading and writing I wanted to do. A Jack and Mara story was percolating and I wanted to get it in ink before it drifted to the ether.
First blush aromas can be deal-makers-or-breakers. Here was almost a breaker with the chemistry of bleach masking something else. After a few minutes, I started to feel like it just didn’t smell clean. I would wait to see if Mom would notice. (She did not)
I chose a table by the big street-facing windows, the restaurant’s best feature now. Blue building across the street dominated the landscape, but chose to ignore it for Jack and Mara. He’s thinking about burning his life down and running away to France to find her. Wish fulfillment.
1:12, Mom arrives. I wonder if that's where I get my tardiness from. I always blamed my wife for this feature of my personality. Certainly I have never noticed my source code as a customarily late-arriver... but now, I'm not sure if I just never noticed it or it's a new feature. I don't care, but it does cross my mind.
It's surprising that I don't recognize her when she walks by the picture windows. At 74, she's thickening a little, has cut off her waist-length hair and bleached it from bright blond to silver/gray. Very vogue. Mine's been dishwater and high and tight most of my life.
Maybe I’ll grow my hair long and roguish before it thins in my seventies. My new nom de plume: Locks Thorlocke.
I may not visually recognize my mother, but the way she moves is unchanged.
It always amazes me how a gait or cadence triggers recognition before ae face comes into focus. Eight times out of ten, I’m right. When I’m wrong, I’m embarrassed, as though I didn’t know the person as well as I thought.
I think I am in a less-than state when mom arrives. I wish I had been warmer. But, I've been off lately. I slowed down on my Lexapro and—it's a little weird. It didn't drop me back into despair, but that all-day buoyancy is missed, leaving me less enthusiastic than I've been for several months.
But, that's another conversation.
Today, we chat amiably about dad, the lawn, back pain (hers, not mine) and writing. It occurs to me, that she has a similar feature to my wife: doppelganging.
I never knew my mother to be a writer. But since I leaned in hard a few years ago, she started carrying notebooks, watching youtube videos on the process. It was the same when I was celebrating my 60th sketchbook, producing the Pop art show.
Both my wife and my mother seem to have the tendency to parrot my interests a little. Maybe it's something in the zeitgeist—check your ego, Woolf.
She orders shrimp fried rice—her standby when the menu leans Asian. I get spicy broccoli chicken (and crab rangoon that never arrives). The food is fine, not memorable. Next time, I’ll stick to a burger.
Her back pain comes up and she laments getting older. We laugh at the idea of her getting one of those inversion hangers. There's a great story about my older cousin getting stuck on one a few years ago and nearly breaking her arm trying to self-rescue.
It was hours before someone came home and found her desperate to get off the thing. First and last time for everything, I suppose.
I describe Deuce Bigalow's inversion-therapy mishap that is the premise for his entire stupidly-hilarious film. She gets it. I always like how she can laugh with me at something that she's never seen. Maybe that's her personality, maybe that's my storytelling. Probably just that I'm her son.
My parents have a pool, which is great for back pain. But it's only helpful a few months out of the year. A hot tub would do wonders for her. She counters with 'I have an 80 gallon bath' and I acquiesce. But, I still think an inflatable hot tub (or bigger) would do wonders for her back.
The blue bank looms and we are drawn to it as our conversation tapers some. Watching the workers across the street rope down the 12 story facade of Big Blue and paint panels fascinates us both. Too expensive to repair correctly, we guess. At some point, will someone spend 10 million and strip off that facade? Maybe 20 million. I don't know. But I do know it does not and will not ever make financial sense in a place like this.
They make the rappelling journey 4 times while we lunch.
We muse about how much they get paid. 'Not enough', mom quips.
She tells me she’s lost two inches of height. A slow-motion car wreck. A friend said something similar not long ago: ‘I’m 5’4” now, shrinking.’
This makes me think how my understanding of beauty has shifted as I've gotten older. Not that I cannot see the beauty of someone in their twenties or thirties. But my palette of attraction has expanded. I see a strength and appeal in older men and women that a younger me could not comprehend. It goes past the diminishing and delves in the expanding revelation of just how attractive they have truly always been.
As if the body begins to fade, to thin, and through this, their heart and mind can finally glow and humm—uncovering what have truly made them irresistible all their lives.
Why is everything changing so fast? For better or worse, I'm just getting started in life. It's not time for it to end yet. But all indications are just that. This makes me sad—a little more Lexapro would have staved that emotion.
We talked some about my writing. I am attending a workshop on creative writing. What will I bring from it? Who knows, new friends. New understanding. An epiphany of some kind? I wish I knew what that needed to be. Possibly how to be brave, to let the world go to hell and just enjoy my tea.
Or, that to go wrong in my own way is better than to go right in someone elses.
Maybe how I need to learn to be less? Less verbose, less prolific. Or, more. More editing.
Edit. Edit. Edit.
Miles Davis said: “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t.”
I want to play them all at once. Like an 88-fingered man who can just press all the keys simultaneously. I can hear the beauty of it. The rest of the world? Not so much.
Reduce, remove, refine.
My wellspring shares a short poem she wrote:
Black dog is sleepy.
The sun is shining.
My black dog feels the warmth.
It’s nice and short. I struggle with short. Not particularly moving, but I’m happy to see her working. Writing is that one place you can go that doesn’t take a lot of space, material, or attention—just time. So much time. You can wallow in it.
Her handwriting wavers now. She says it’s from slowing down, trying to improve her cursive. When I invoke concern, she waves it off as no big deal. It makes me ache to think one day she won’t be able to write at all.
“Is this new? Or have you always had that jitter?” I ask. This is something her oldest son can ask without being offensive. It's genuine concern. Are you losing motor skills, mother? Is at the heart of it.
Also, I've seen in my drawing. Though, there I consider the aliveness of the line a feature, not a flaw. This moment makes it all a little too real.
So she writes her name like she has my whole memory. It's as loopy and fluid as I always remember. Muscle memory? Is she fighting to control the squiggle? Or was slowing down to be more accurate the culprit?
There's really nothing to fear. But I seem to have become an expert at finding details to fret over. Something I should work on.
I always think these lunches need to be about the big things in life. But they never are. We don't trade secrets or confess our sins. No blaming one another for the failings we've both been through. Just two humans sharing a meal.
These times are the quiet moments. Not celebrations, illness, births or deaths... those landmarks in life. Just an hour or two of a parent and a child making sure they stay connected.
A moment between life's big notes. And I've got some big notes playing right now. She does too.
Sometimes I wonder if I waited too long to learn how to listen to the silences. Like I was always too busy with life and other people's problems to even consider my own family and existence.
But not today. I don't worry. Any sooner and the silence would scare me. I think right now it is the perfect time to pause and hang in the quiet measures. Take note of how they contrast with the cacophony of the orchestra of our lives.
Miles, it seems, was a pretty wise man.
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