Author’s note: This is from a series based on my journal. Unconventional and idiosyncratic punctuation and formatting are intentional.
Before going to fitness class this morning I looked through some pictures and videos Gray sent overnight of her and Dad’s trip to Australia. She mentioned that she is under-dressed for some of the windy and chilly weather they are having. She did not believe the packing list when it said to bring fleece and other cold-weather apparel. I can imagine the thinking. What? It’s summer there! Why would I need fleece? She said she has managed to cobble together outfits from others on the trip. In one picture she stands in front of a deck overlooking the ocean squinting into the sun huddled against the wind. Gray said that many on the trip are serious birders. And then there is me, she said. She often finds herself waiting patiently for the birders to see some tiny winged thing through their binoculars on a branch half a mile away. In a primordial forest they saw giant ferns. They look as big as beach umbrellas. In a video a duck-billed platypus snuffled through the muck of a shallow pond, so odd-looking I felt as if I wanted to ask God why he created such a creature. At a park education center Gray hugged a koala sculpture climbing a tree. We see koalas every day! she said. Dad stood by a kangaroo likeness that reached to his shoulders. Visual Aids was the spangram for Strands today. Answers included Photo and Model.
At fitness class I asked Allison how her son likes living in Los Angeles. He took a job there after graduating last spring. She said he loves living there but he’s not crazy about his job. He’s dealing with annoying bosses and unreasonable expectations, she said. Welcome to the real world! said Michelle. I admired Allison’s balletic form doing one of the warm-down stretches. I tried to achieve the same effect but I found I could not bend the same way. Tab told me that possums are our continent’s only marsupial. For some reason I can’t remember I mentioned the one I see waddling around the back gate and box bush at dawn and dusk. Ever since I visited the website of Dad and Gray’s tour group its ads have appeared in my online browsing. So have many for mold killer products from a few weeks ago when I looked into treating the mold on the third floor. The ads are as tenacious and opportunistic as the fungus itself. Unloved was the pangram in Spelling Bee today.
This afternoon Two Men and a Truck came by to help Polly move. They were just that. A skinny man named Tommy carried down all the boxes from her room. Another man named Jay parked and managed the truck. Tommy skipped up and down the steps as if his legs were loaded with springs. Even when he was carrying a box that I could barely push across the carpet he seemed hardly to touch the ground. Loading the boxes took him all of 20 minutes. After following Tommy and Jay to the apartment Polly was back to collect the rest of her things. It seems as if Polly’s moving should be more of a milestone. Maybe that would be the case if she were moving further away. Culver and Lourdes’ apartment is just a three-minute drive. Polly’s moving feels more like a continuation than a termination. I still have concerns about her stalling or drifting but I also hope that moving will be the jump-start she needs.
Before leaving Polly threw away some notes from Granny I had shown her when I was first working on my book, miscellaneous lists of books, errands, gift ideas, the phone numbers and addresses of friends, some of the paper yellowed and curled, the pencil faint and blurred. Polly had thought she wanted to get a tattoo somewhere of Granny’s writing. She’s since changed her mind. I am glad. Granny was not the most open-minded, tolerant, or accepting person. Polly also never knew her. There is no real connection or familiarity there. The notes also call to mind Granny’s crazily annotated week-to-week calendars. At first they fascinated me. Then they came to disturb me as I saw her life distilled into notations concerning her pain, medication, and other similar preoccupations, each page crammed with her scrawling script, in green, blue, and red ink. I would not have liked seeing on Polly something that would have reminded me of the pages and the mental disarray they likely signified.
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Possums as marsupials, exercise class, your mother, birding, and a move all in one journal entry! No wonder I am drawn to your work. Your mind never stops just as I experience.
Love this: "I would not have liked seeing on Polly something that would have reminded me of the pages and the mental disarray they likely signified."