So, we arrived home on a sunny, harmless looking Saturday afternoon. After a howling Humboldt night of torrential rain. After our brief, but thoroughly convincing, consultation with the studious Dr. Broffman. It was a long-five-hour drive south down the 101 from Mckinleyville to the Pine Street Clinic in San Anselmo, and a longer-five-hour return drive of course. We, Lisa, Jasper and I, stayed in the Best Western in Novato where we usually stay on southerly Bay Area visits to doctors, dentists, veterinarians… etc. We were gone for just a little over twenty-four innocent hours.
When we opened the front door to “my father’s house”… to the wonderful, light filled, open, airy home which we, gratefully, share in Mckinleyville. We were met immediately by two energetically distraught… dissembling teenagers
Dare I say— possessed?
Oh dear. Why am I doing this? Surely some memories just aren’t worth revisiting, retelling or… psychically re-igniting and spiritually revising?
Artistically reclaiming and… shamanically healing?
Right now. As I write. My wife, Lisa…
Dear, dutiful—one and only child and daughter. Lisa Marie is in the emergency room in Munson Hospital in Traverse City, Michigan. Waiting for her ninety-three year old mother, June, to be admitted to the hospital for extreme lower back pain.
June is a stalwart champion in the cancer arena. She has/had multiple forms of cancer. Six at last count: uterine, bladder, ureter, breast, neck, skin…
The most potent form of which, perhaps—the cancer in her kidneys—
That would make lucky seven!!
She acquired some years ago as an unfortunate “side-effect” of adjuvant radiation therapy treatments which she received in conjunction with chemotherapy for her original uterine cancer. Her uterus was removed.
“Radiation-induced” cancer moved from the original site of her uterus into her bladder, ureter… and now into her kidneys.
June is tough. She was a real life— “Rosey the Riveter” back in the day!
These tough, legendary mid-western farm women…
Let me tell you. They do exist.
And they are very, very hard to kill, Senor Cancer!!
It’ll take more than a shovel, a shotgun… and a few hundred gray… to bring down June!!
You scrawny, toothless, no good sidewinder.
The journey of life… living and dying. Is complicated and cruel. Isn’t it?
So. Back to the front door of “my father’s house”… Back to the two decidedly guilty-looking teenagers and—
THE SMELL.
Yes, it was the smell that hit me first. An alarmingly strong, complex… many-nostril-haired… frightful odor. A polluted wave of teen party excrescences. Vomit, sweat, hormonal essence, flat beer, burst champagne bubbles, and other alcoholic beverages and party mixers being the main ingredients… followed by the stale, acrid hints of tobacco and the cloying sweeter scents of marijuana… and something darker and more sinister… which called to mind the burning of witches… satanic ritual worship?
All the frantic, fragrant fun… the whole lurid body of evidence, then… all wound up into an odious bundle of caustic memories and burned upon a pyre of cheap incense … and?
A glance beyond the two cowering teens revealed… oddly cupped rows of smeary blond oak floorboards, the dark cracks between them widening and… stick stick stick… tack tack tack… the peculiar sound of walking on…. wtf?
Peering down at one’s shoes in sensory heightened bewilderment as if to discover several wads of chewing gum thereon…
Why are the floorboards so sticky?!
What the hell is… was… going on here?
WTF! IS THAT GODAWFUL, SICKENING SMELL!?
As the mind raced to discover the meaning of the subtle and not so subtle cues assaulting the olfactory, auditory and visual apparatrix… one felt like a mental gymnast tumbling, twisting and turning inside out—
And then the simple explanation presented itself: Murphy’s Oil Soap. And, Simple Green. Buckets of them…
“We tried to wash the wood floors with Murphy’s Oil Soap, but we ran out and”…. I heard my dear daughter Syrah chirruping, and noted that her recent accomplice, whose name I can’t recall at the moment, was nodding her head in earnest agreement
“We had a party last night and…. Waaaaa….” the tears began to flow like a sudden thunderburst… both of them, as if on cue—
“And the seniors, and the cops, and the ambulance, and the paramedics, and the firetrucks, and the neighbors, and…”
AND, WHAT THE HELL!?
Slow down… the cops?
“The cops came some time after midnight because the stupid neighbors apparently complained about the noise and some stupid drunk kid fell on the porch and cut himself and then some idiot over-reacted and called the
ambulance and some stupid people panicked when the police came and started kicking screens out and jumping out the windows and…”
All hell was breaking loose in a quiet neighborhood in Mckinleyville by the Sea in other words because—
“We just wanted to have a small dinner party with a few friends and… someone tweeted someone and…”
It spiraled completely out of control. Went viral…
Imagine that.
The “rager” of the year 2014. All the cool high school kids of Mckinleyville and Arcata and surrounding environs. Naturally. But, why exclude college age kids? High school and college dropouts… just regular folks? Right? What the hell! People of all ages, welcome. Utter strangers, homeless folks off the square… rapists, terrorists, murderers and drug dealers from Mexico… homegrown serial killers driving by on the 101. Come one, come all—
Our gardener’s son was there! Drew junior. OMG!
My fifteen-year-old daughter, Syrah, was dancing on the granite countertops on the kitchen island!
IT WAS EPIC DUDE!!
IT WAS EPIC DUDE!!
In my father's house..............
MANY MANSIONS IN THE SKY--
MANY MANSIONS IN THE SKY--
How wonderful! Picture that.
Or… better yet… just go on-line and see all the iPhone shots!!
Go on Twitter and Snapchat and drool mf's…
Isn’t it wonderful! How much power we’ve dumped into the—rainbow-nail-dyed-and-rhinestone-studded—tiny hands of fifteen-year-old girls these days?!
ALL HAIL TARA, THE CONQUEROR!!
Om Tarte Tuttare Ture Sohum.......
ALL HAIL TARA, THE CONQUEROR!!
Om Tarte Tuttare Ture Sohum.......
Thank you, Apple! Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Corporate America!
Thank me, thank you, thank all of us!
What a wonderful, wonderful… technologically advanced, delicious world we live in these days!
Couldn’t carve these Confessions without it!
Thanks, dad. Om, mama.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And then, the newly hired (thirty-forty-something?) hyper-confident, female family therapist was explaining to the ignorant father…
“Oh, well… she’s the “new girl in town” and… she doesn’t have any friends… and “kids do these things these days”… and… you really should allow her to go to the junior/senior prom even though she’s a freshman… because…”
