café babylon

(Pt I is here; Café version, C99% version); Pt II is here: (Café version; C99% version)

Part III

I’d been building balconies for faux-Tyrolean apartments in Breckenridge, Colorado, and once they were finished, my now-husband, our dog Lincoln and I embarked on a hitch-hiking odyssey.  We first headed to Poland, Ohio to visit my mother, and to and ‘do something’ with my dad’s cremated remains.  No one seemed to want to touch them; God knows why.

We drove to our old stomping-grounds near Kent; Twin Lakes really, walked to his favorite golf hole, and sprinkled his ashes and bone fragments at the edge of the fairway.  Looking up, a huge, smiling papa-face filled my sky-mind; I imagined everyone could see his radiant smile as it seemed to fill the sky.  Bye, pop; God, I love you.  I do so wish you hadn’t been the sole child of such rotten parents; how different your life would have been.

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(Pt. I is here; Café version, C99% version)

Part II:

I went to visit my mother in the St. Joseph’s mental ward as often as I could, and met most of her fellow inmates in the commons area.  Lady had taken on the informal role of ‘social worker’, a job she’d had for the county for a few years in Ohio.

Occupational therapy was the clay-ashtrays, potholders and leather-craft sort, and my mum wanted to make me some moccasins, much more preferable to a popsicle-stick jewelry box.  We decided on the size, and over a couple weeks she finished them.  They were the Tandy Leather Kit kind, remember them?  Split-leather suede that tied just below the ankle, with three inches of machine-cut fringe around the collar; no hard sole, just the same suede—you could curl your toes in them.  They were grand and pathetic all at once, and I loved them!  And as it turned out, useful.
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I was standing in the kitchen of a house in Boulder, Colorado, staring down at the letter on the counter, but no longer seeing it.  The shock-waves in my mind seemed to come from the paper, and my eyes began to see planes of shadows and light, forms without meaning as the photons of sunlight coming through a nearby window rode the waves.   They battered me and turned my brain to cellophane.

The letter that had arrived a few minutes earlier in the morning mail was from my mother, and it announced that by the time I got the letter, she would be dead.  Dead.  My mind careened with live-mother images from the past few weeks, months, years; then dead-mother flashes; I leaned on the counter to support my wobbly legs.

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