My mail box was
empty the first two weeks I was here. There were, I thought, two possible
explanations: I am a loser, and no one sent me anything; or I am an idiot and
made a mistake filling out the change-of-address form before I left Ashtabula.
I gave the matter some thought and concluded the problem was idiocy. Now there
is a strong possibility that I am a loser, but I am a loser with a few
outstanding bills, and creditors do not discriminate; they send their bills to anyone,
even losers.
After more intense thought, I realized the
dearth of mail might not be a reflection on my personality or my intelligence.
The day I moved in, Nona – whom I had spoken to frequently in the weeks leading
up to my move – gave me a quick tour. “And these are the mailboxes,” she said.
“Yours is up here.” Then she looked at me in the wheelchair and decided it
would be easier to bring the mailbox down to me than it would be for me to get
up to the mailbox. An hour or so later, she dropped by the room and said my
mailbox had been relocated. Every day thereafter, I went to the box and checked
on the accumulating dust.
And on his third Monday at Covenant Woods,
Thomas went to the front desk and said unto Shirley, “Hey! I think we’ve got a problem.”
I told her what I thought might have happened –that the mail was being put
somewhere other than in my newly relocated box – without letting on that the
real reason might have something to do with idiocy. Shirley went to the
mailroom, and a few minutes later told me that there was no mail for me in the
box that until two weeks earlier had been B116. I thanked her for her taking
the time to look, and as I wondered how to tell the Postal Service that I’m an
idiot, Shirley said, “When the mailman comes, I’ll ask him about it.” In the
afternoon, none too confident, I stopped by the mailbox and found mail in it.
There was a check from the dentist – I had left town with a credit balance in
his account – and a bill from the Cleveland Clinic. Alas, the bill was
considerably larger than the check, but isn’t that always the way it is.
Later in the week, I found some birthday
cards – “will you still need me, will you still greet me when I’m sixty-four?”
– and a manila envelope from Suzanne, filled with the most delightful lies in
the form of poems the people in the writing class composed on the occasion of
my going south. This week the Facebook messages, the cards, the poems and
Suzanne’s note put a little spring in my step. Well, the wheelchair was sprightlier,
anyway.
Thursday I went over to the strip mall to
get a few things, and as I was cruising up the sidewalk my phone rang. It was
Bethany. She is always so bubbly and never fails to lift my spirits. Hayden is
walking and talking, and his mouth is filling up with teeth. Beth and Ken are
getting ready to do some preliminary work on their garden. They moved over the
winter and are up on the mountain now, high enough that the possibility of
frost will be there until early June. So they won’t be able to do much planting
for a while, but they’re anxious to get started.
The best day for me is Sunday. That’s the
day Russ and Karen bring dinner to me. Yesterday, Karen made chicken and corn
on the cob. And there was a store bought lemony custard pie with a Nilla Wafer
crust. We had half of it for desert, and they left the other half here. They
know how to please the old man.
My birthday wasn’t the only age-related
reminder of the week. Karen and Russ have now been together for thirteen years,
and to mark the occasion, Karen said Russ got her a broiler pan and a baking
pan. I thought this was the start of a man-with-no-clue joke. But Karen went on
to say, “You know you’re getting old when you get a broiler pan for your
anniversary and you’re excited. Actually, that’s what I told Russ I wanted.”
Ah, visions of domestic bliss are wonderful, but if Russ and Karen are getting
old, I’m getting older.
Sometimes the best letter or e-mail is the
one you never send. I couldn’t sleep Saturday night; my mind was a raging sea
of frustration and anger. About two-thirty, I gave up on the idea of sleeping
and went to the computer. I took a moment to decide which friend I wanted to
tell my troubles to and then started banging away. I don’t have Internet access
in my apartment, so I created a Word document, which I planned to copy and
paste into an e-mail when, by dawn’s early light, I went to the area of the
building with Wi-Fi. Because I was working in Word, I know that the moment I
typed the 547th word, I became disgusted with my whining. And yet, I felt so
much better for having whined. I clicked on “Close,” the computer asked if I
wanted to save the screed, and I clicked on “Don’t Save.” I crawled back into
bed, slept for several hours and had a wonderful Sunday.
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