Why Yes, I Do Call Myself a Geographer

And suddenly I'm eight years old all over again.

I remember the name of the elementary school in Ann Arbor where I went to the first half of third grade. I used to walk there every day, it was just at the end of my street, whatever that was. But Google-Map the name of the elementary school, and look at the surrounding street names until one sounds sort of familiar, and drag the little street-view guy to about where you sort of maybe remember starting off from, 32 years ago, and... bam.

I didn't remember what the house looked like, but I do remember the railed-in patio above the family room, which is what that sunroom on the right is. My parents rented this house; the owner was a gourmet chef, and had a locally-produced cooking show that was filmed in the kitchen. It was a nice kitchen. Mom loved it.

I remember a little powder room directly off the kitchen, wallpapered in New Yorker covers. It had a laundry chute to the basement. So did all the upstairs bedrooms. My room was blue...

The house was furnished; I thought the grand old wooden hall tree in the entryway was a throne. It didn't suit my stepfather's taste, which runs to Hobbit Post-Modern. (Or perhaps Post-Apocalyptic.) Our regular coffee table was a slice of a knot from a redwood tree, wild and beautiful and (from the perspective of a small child in close quarters) perhaps needlessly jagged. The Coopers had antiques. I think this is about the cutest house I have ever seen. When we left it, my parents bought an A-frame on two acres of land in Ypsilanti, where all the furniture fit right in - though Mom always complained the exterior doors didn't fit quite right, and it used to give her nightmares.

The washer and dryer here were in the basement, where all the laundry chutes led. Oooh, but the basement was scary. It had a looming shadowy cistern, and was dark and dank and stone-walled, as required by Federal law. Wooden treads led down from the kitchen, just behind the powder room.

And I remember the detached garage, and that it had a clubhouse built up near the ceiling in the back of it, accessible by a ladder. (The family we were renting from had boys just a little older than me.) And I made best friends with a girl named Jenny who went to my school and lived a couple of blocks away, because we were exactly alike: we both lived in rented houses, both had clubhouses in the garage, and both of us had stepfathers who used to joke about selling us to gypsies. (Does anybody say that anymore?) Our parents were friends. Later, when we moved to Ypsilanti, and Jenny's family moved somewhere or other on the shores of Lake Huron, we'd still get together every couple of months. Jenny's mom had a baby girl - Whitney - and thus ruined our perfect symmetry, until my own mom got pregnant a couple of years later, and my sister Jessica was born. But by then we were in San Antonio, and I don't know where Jenny's family went.

One morning on our way to school together, I remember, we got distracted by a full-sized igloo in a neighbor's yard. (This was Ann Arbor, remember - you think school was called on account of a couple measly feet of snow?!) We were entranced, and stopped to play, just for a minute, and lost ourselves in fun. The igloo was just packed snow, but the architects had made windows by pressing and steaming up part with their breath until it turned to clear ice. I have no idea how long had passed before Jenny and I suddenly looked at each other and said "Oh shit!" (or the eight-year-old equivalent thereof). We had completely forgotten about school!

It really blows my mind how I could see something like that, on my computer screen at work - I only took an idle look, in a slow moment - and so much comes rushing back. All the changes and losses of the intervening years gone - Mom making chicken marengo or boeuf bourguignon in that kitchen - she was a great fan of Julia Child and used to watch her program religiously. Looking at that picture I can almost smell her cooking.

It's been a rough spring, this year. Funny to stumble across a simple image like that and feel it all blur away.

Happy Mother's Day

My mom wasn't a dog, of course - in fact she was a total hottie - but this video reminds me a lot of her practicing the piano. Partly because, when she first got bifocals, she had to tilt her head at exactly this angle to read the music, and partly because she also used to go "oof" under her breath when she hit a wrong note.

Mom was cute.

Teenagers!

Can't live with 'em, and divorcing your kids is generally frowned upon by society.

Stuck-up prigs! (Society, I mean, not teenagers, who frankly could benefit from being a little more stuck-up and a little less the way they normally are, which is not particularly stuck-up, not that teenagers can't from time to time be stuck-up, but they're generally more likely to be massively emotional, hormonal, and drama-laden, than with which being stuck-up is infinitely easier to deal, inasmuch as being stuck-up does not generally engage innocent bystanders, i.e. parents who have just gotten home from work and only wanted to check email and chill for a little bit, in full-blown screamfests, which are not, contrary to what reality TV may have led you to believe, fun.)

We're all better now and have had a nice talk and I still love Katie very much, but if everyone else would be so kind as to refrain from being mad at me for at least a couple of days, I'd really appreciate it.

And if somebody would pat me gently on the shoulder and perhaps say kind things like "there, there" and "poor baby," it would be just heavenly. Because - not always, of course, but sometimes - there's nothing else like having a teenager to make you really want your mommy.

Housesitting

Margie is housesitting at her ex-boyfriend's place.

It is, oh my God, y'all, SO totally cool. It's on Holly Street, and is an art-house do-over of one of the modest little 1920s bungalows there, all of two minutes away from downtown. Some dense shrubbery conceals most of the front, so all you can see is a glimpse of a small, ordinary house with a nice front porch. Margie leads me through the front yard, past the facade, when I arrive, through an attractive garden at the side of the property.

The original house is on a gigantic lot, easily a full acre or more. It's been divided into a duplex, front and back, with a common laundry room and bathroom between. Behind is another two-story structure - Margie's ex's place, a loft apartment with stained concrete and mosaic floors and a Mediterranean, mirror-tiled stairway leading to the second story balcony. A fountain plays outside.

Across the courtyard from this and the original house is the building housing the common kitchen, with an immense covered patio at the back. The faint gas smell and lofty ceilings inside remind me of the coop where I lived in college. Renters take turns maintaining the yard, cooking, and cleaning, and their cats and dogs have free play of the property, none seeming to mind each other; though Margie's ex's dog has a few loudly vocal altercations with either some raccoons in the woods, or perhaps a familly of laryngitic banshees. It's hard to tell.

Behind that is a yard with a fireplace, lawn chairs, and cement-block benches. Further back still is what Margie tells me is a "guest trailer," plus another small building serving as a communal restroom, and a further area, screened off by bamboo, with some more structures where she tells me other people live, so we don't venture there. Another building in the back houses a garage and studio space. I can't see it very well in the dark.

Margie and I talk about anything and everything, It leads around eventually to Mom, and how I dream about her frequently and about how in my dreams I always know she is dead, and even talk to her about this, yet never really seem to resolve anything. Margie says she dreams about Mom every single night, but often they are fighting. By the end of this part of the conversation we are both in tears.

We talk about men, and about life, and about all the other things that generally plague human beings (specificailly women) on this planet. We look at some pictures of David Bowie. We hug. Margie is the closest person to me on the face of this earth.

Let's have a party before her ex comes home!

Spooked

How freaked out would you be if you had just spent the night all alone in your house for the very first time and when you got up in the morning to use the restroom there was pee in the toilet?

And you knew it wasn't yours, of course. I was brought up to flush, thankyouverymuch.

I was a little freaked, but I'm pretty sure it was Romeo, who always appears slightly disgruntled at not getting to be a human, though I've tried explaining to him that being human is overrated. It's been a few years, but I've "caught" him peeing in the toilet before. I never got a chance to encourage him because he thought he was in terrible trouble and dashed off. I've caught him going in his water dish, too. I think he used the toilet last night because it's cold and rainy and he didn't want to go outside.

Of course, now he's on the bed right next to me, back legs splayed in the air, making enthusiastic schnorking noises as he cleans his nether regions. See, Romeo? I'm telling you, humans can't do that.

My mom was easily freaked out by strange sounds and other odd little things and I inherited that trait from her. She told a story about lying in bed in the dark as a child, petrified with fear, because there appeared to be a burglar smoking a cigarette in her bedroom. (It turned out to be a firefly.) And I remember one afternoon when she had gone out to run errands and I was in the house by myself, I heard a rustling of papers and a low groaning noise from the living room, then footsteps coming towards the room where I was. I ran and hid behind a door and grabbed a broom to whack the intruder with, and it's fortunate that I didn't; because it turned out to be my mom, who had gotten home without my hearing her, and sat down at the desk in the living room to pay bills.

Mom... This morning I woke up from a dream about her. I was in my old apartment, by myself, when the landlord came in to tell my my mother was there to see me. I thought he must mean my stepmother, my mother-in-law, something like that. But it really was Mom, and when I ran to her crying, she hugged me and stroked my hair and told me she loved me and everything was okay.

I don't know if I love those dreams or hate them.

It's cold outside, and rainy and gray. How lovely to have no one to answer to and nothing in particular to do today. Romeo's finished his morning ablutions and fallen asleep. It's a perfect day to stay home and help him hold down the bed.