Sunday, March 22, 2009

*

on sunday morning i wake up early.
i prepare myself for the day ahead of me. its going to be strange.
i arrange a ride to the same small town i grew up in, escaped, all those years ago.
i need to get ready.
in the bathroom i look in the mirror. my normal self looks back. i don't look tired. my eyes are not red. i do not look distressed or distraught.
i look detached.
i frown at the mirror. Sometimes i worry that my "professional detachment" has metastasized too far into the margins of my personal life. this is definitely one of those times.

i shower. wash my hair. brush my teeth. curl my lashes. dress myself in black.

i'm excited to wear my new dress.
don't be dumb.

my legs are pasty and fish belly white, marked with too many bruises and scratches for normal wear and tear.

courtney love.

thank you, wrestling dogs and cats for a living.
i will need pantyhose, which i don't have.
i put on my shoes and my coat and so does Richard. we'll go for coffee and hosiery before we split up for the afternoon.

by the time we sit for coffee my feet are already sore and a bit red across the top where the leather edge has bitten into them. they won't rub so much once the pantyhose are on, but i'm glad to have something to focus on if things get weird.

"its just so weird", i tell Richard.

today i'm going to the wake of a girl nine years younger than me. we grew up together and our parent would go out and i'd babysit. we'd catch bullfrogs in the creek and snakes sunning on the stone walkway. we'd build forts in the woods and watch cartoons.
her name was "minnow" back then and she was the kind of kid you could tell straight away would grow up to be someone amazing.
and then she did grow up, and our families drifted and she got away from me, and now its been years and she's gone; died.
gotten away from all of us.

she was at university. told her mum she wasn't feeling well, went to bed...that was it.
she was twenty years old.

i'm the only one in our family who can make it to the wake.

"it IS going to be weird", Richard nods, "death is a pretty fucked up thing"

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

*

it was just as we were leaving when the phone rang.

after the mad scramble to find mittens, scarves, keys, we were finally bundled against the cold, ready to tear out the door and race off to the play we'd forgotten about until the very last minute.
i laughed as my my phone buzzed obnoxiously from the coffee table where, after all the last minute commotion, i'd been just about to forget it.

i snatch it up and flip it open.

i didn't recognise the voice at first, gravelly, tight and tired, pulled from a receiver thousands of kilometers away.

its my dad.

i've never heard him sound so haggard, so frail.
my stomach wrings itself...

and he's small talking me.
and he's asking what i'm up to, how i'm doing...
and he sounds so...old.

"I'm fine..." i tell him, and then, pointedly "how are you??"

there is a microcosm of silence

my throat tightens.

"well, Prilly..." , he sighs, " i'm not too good..."

the words aren't even finished and my mouth is dry, my guts twist into knots and my brain makes a fifty-two-pick-up game out of worst case scenarios.

where is he calling from?
where is mum?
when is the last time you spoke with granny? visited??
why haven't you called??

what the FUCK is going on??

In a clear, concise, childrens classroom voice, i ask him if he's okay? is mum okay? what's happened?

i realize that its not my dad that i'm trying to talk down.
its me.
its the panic rising in my chest
its the dirty taste of metal in my mouth

my heart pounds.
his words take eons to form sentences.

in the doorway behind me, Richard has gone quiet. the whole apartment is as still as a mausoleum.

we wait stiffly for the shit to hit the fan.


******
******


Friday, March 6, 2009

you happy now

Ok, so,
My shift at the Good Food Company today might best be described as "Nighmarish", or perhaps "a harrowing ordeal"....(it was CRAZY busy, people were weird, people were cranky and then the cash register completely broke and half of the transactions that DID get put through were done on 'void' with no paper trail to track the numbers....wheeeee!)

I was dead tired and ready to drop by the end of the day, so i was completely surprised when one of my tables wanted to make a donation to the "Send April to Africa" fund. I said it was very nice of him and thank you very much, and please help yourself to any of the Photo prints if they should happen to please your eye.... as he left a rather large tip for the table, and i assumed that that was that.

Needless to say i was completely stunned when he wanted to make another transaction for a 250.00 donation for the trip. (!!!!)
I protested that it was too much, and he said, no, I'd been serving him and his family for years, and he strongly believes in helping out people within the community and he thought it was a good cause, and that was that. !

so yeah! pretty awesome!

then at the end of the shift i ended up with a huge wad of tips from the crazy busy day...and when i got home and checked the mail - expecting a huge cell phone bill and not much else- there was a government cheque for 600 bucks in outstanding GST credits. So all told, Travel fund is up a cool 1000 bucks in one amazing day.

awesome,
awesome,
awesome,

*squee!*