Passive Aggressive Post-Its and the Impossible, Inanimate Good-Bye

I had a grilled chicken salad from Panera for lunch today. Stick with me on this, and I'll tell you why this is such an outrage. I intended to have three cheese chicken and broccoli, courtesy of Lean Cuisine. I smelled something good around 1:00 and realized I was hungry. Upon opening the (community) fridge to retrieve my frozen low-cal, low-fat, low-taste mediocrity, I gasped. Someone stole my lunch. I really am trying to give the thief the benefit of the doubt. I know it can be confusing when you have to share space with others. But is it really possible to forget, in the course of a couple of hours, that you did not, in fact, remove a frozen item from your freezer at home, commute with it to work and place it in the fridge? How can one make that mistake? Baffled, I retreated to Panera, but not without much gnashing of teeth. This is even worse than when the cleaning crew emptied the fridge of all contents, including my icy and much anticipated Diet Cokes. You can be sure, my refrigerated items will heretofore be adorned with passive aggressive messages on post-its to ensure that this never happens again.

This absurdity is what keeps me from focusing on the real issues in my life. I feel like Samuel Beckett. But I've never contemplated hanging myself for the physical thrill, so perhaps no.

This weekend I reunited with two old friends-- one from high school and one from earlier than that, and it was such a nice surprise to see that sometimes it's possible to rejuvenate old friendships. I graduated from high school and moved away with no intent of maintaining the majority of my friendships, and no apologies or attempts at contact to prove otherwise. Especially given the way I thought it would all go, this is serendipitous and wonderful.

Yesterday I visited my grandmother's house, and really went through it for the first time since my grandfather died. Since then, my visits had consisted of picking my grandmother up or dropping her off, and once alone in the car, I cried every time. It is unbearable to watch her retreat into the big dark house-- alone. Before March, I can't remember a time when I left their house and my grandfather did not walk me to my car and wave from the driveway until I couldn't see him anymore. So, I completely understand the need for her to get out of there. But as I went through and saw the changes that are being made to get it ready to sell, I couldn't help but think that's where I grew up.

I spent every holiday in that house (except for what my family refers to as "The Lost Christmas" that I spent in Indiana). Even when my family skipped around central Maryland every few years, I felt like that house was always there-- the one thing that refused to change. I stood on the deck and thought about the birthday parties I had there every year, the time we set up tents for a camping trip in the yard. My dad spent most of that night walking skittish girls through the wet grass into the house to use the bathroom.

Mom joined me on the deck and said, tears in her eyes, "I can just see Dad out there, in his sweaty white t-shirt cleaning the pool to get it ready for you guys."

I could see that too, but I didn't remember it as much as I did my brother sneaking drowned frogs and mice out of the skimmer and chasing me with them, or the spring we collected tadpoles off the cover that grew into little frogs on our porch before Mom made us set them free. Or the day Mau was in charge of John and me, and she accidentally whacked me in the head with a 20-foot pole while attempting to clean the pool and while John got attacked by wasps and thought that the meat tenderizer she put on his stings meant he had to be cooked. I walked around the yard and thought of marks on the grass from the rides we took on Pop's series of John Deeres. I was never allowed to drive.

I remembered taking walks with Mau around the neighborhood, collecting leaves in Ziploc baggies. She would lean into me, causing me to walk up along the curb while she whispered about the neighbors. John and I used to play hide and seek with the neighbor kids under the pine trees that are even bigger than I remember. We walked the shih-tzu brothers when they were just puppies. Only one survives now. He's 14. And even he walks slower, with his head down, knowing something is missing.