March 4, 2008

The most amazing quantity and duration of rain--

If I hoped that the ending of Crown of Shadows and the accomplishment of a jaunt to Atlanta would allow a period of productivity, I was wrong. My desktop refused to boot this morning, very nearly the most catastrophic thing which could happen right now. The man at Sassy’s diagnosed a destroyed mother board, but did managed to retrieve my files. A thousand dollars later, I have a new desktop on the way and a tiny pencil of plastic containing my life’s work ready to be injected into it. God thinks that by wasting great swathes of my time– such as driving nine hours yesterday, such as distilling this day down to a hunt for timely computer repair–he is teaching me patience. Exactly the opposite is true. I think that by reacting badly to his impositions I may stop them. I don’t know that to be wrong at all.

Drove, as alluded to above, to Atlanta to see dad in his new digs at the Dogwood. He has so many doctor appointments that I don’t know that he’s actually had time to acclimate. We had lunch with his new friend, Joe, a Texan who must have been big in his time, very much in control of his environment. They have a jovial relationship, though dad, being deaf and hardly able to speak above a whisper, has a hard time communicating with anybody. Lunch was almost silent, because everybody is pretty much deaf. Dad should have had more friends in his time, for he seems to be a good one, encouraging me to talk to Joe because he can’t, and he imagines Joe to be starved for conversation. I know I shouldn’t pass judgment from the outside; I know that Dogwood is the creme de la creme of such institutions; I know the people will take life pretty much on any terms whatever, but still, the place seemed horrible to me, a luxurious last waiting room, where women who once ran corporations have to ask three times for lemon for their tea, where good food is eaten in silence burdened by the weight of multiple remembrance. Everyone is good to them. It doesn’t matter. Most of them are bewildered still to be alive. Some of them are alive only for lack of a means of exiting. Dogwood is enlarging, and I observed that there will be more call for such places as the population ages, and dad said, "You’d think there’d be a limit."
Linda took me to the school where she works, and which David and Daniel attend. It was wonderful to see my handsome nephews among their friends, clearly popular, smiling and mischievous. They hugged me and cried "Uncle David!" and one of their friends did the same thing. I thought it was charming and funny. Linda tells me my new nephew is some sort of Nigerian prince. Jonathan arrived later, a jolly giant, affectionate with his brothers, vocally but not quite cloyingly devout. A neighborhood boy named John came over, and there was much searching on computer for horrific weapons of war, which the boys would describe to each other in terms which one soon recognized were enthusiastic fiction. We used to do that too, without the visual aids, or based on comic books and movies. Bloody-mindedness is hardwired in boys; let’s hope it remains, as it was among them, and us, merry. I smiled at them for their merry selves, and less merrily at myself, for one of the lives which could have been and was not.

The drive back was ghastly, and magnified by events such as taking one hour to progress seven miles on McGinnes Ferry, which seemed such a shortcut in the morning.

Dusty pink trees are abloom in Atlanta.

I surprised myself by thinking very little about Crown of Shadows during the drive. Every other thing in the world, but little about that. But, then, what would I think? To think about the performances would be to miss the people who gave them. As for the rest, all is accomplished, and one wants to stop short of thinking oneself into too much satisfaction.

Grandmother’s china came back with me in four cartons. I don’t know why I wanted it so bad, or why I am so excited about having it. Maybe I think it will cement memories. I won’t unload it from the car until the rain stop, fearful of slipping in the mud and breaking something.