I am sitting on a burgundy leather couch in the Satellite coffee shop. I used to come here and write with a small group of people, we did Bones-style writing, and I remember how much the music bothered me. Today, now, it’s a bluesy piece with an organ played low and a woman’s smoky voice. Lounge music. It all sounds the same to me. I wish they’d turn the volume down just a hair or two.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day observed. I think Wednesday might be the real Memorial Day. Is it May 30? I go tomorrow with Dad to Costilla, to the graveyard where his mom and dad are buried. It’s our tradition for this day. I told someone about this and she said, Isn’t Memorial Day for soldiers who’ve died? I don’t know, I told her. All I know is this is what we do, me and Dad. Not always, but for the past several years. Maybe seven or eight, I don’t know. Dad has done it for a long time. I joined him back when I realized it was a time to get to know Dad better. To get to know where he came from. I spent so much time knowing Mom and her parents. Dad’s were dead by the time any of us came around.
And now that musician with the head of curls, the one that Julia Roberts married for a while. What’s his name? That’s who’s playing over the speaker now, and I’m trying to think what I might have to say about Memorial Day that this song is preventing me from getting to. Nothing, perhaps. Nothing except Memorial Day seems to have become a holiday for grilling steaks or hamburgers, drinking beer. Opening up the pool. That’s fine. It’s good to have a day off, and for most people, when they have a chance to finally sit back and not think of much of anything, they think about their grandparents or parents or uncles or whoever it is that’s passed on and out of their lives.
Dad will meet me at my house at 7 in the morning. The girls went home tonight with Mom. This is about the first chance I’ve had to just sit down and write. To check on the blog. To do much of anything besides unpacking and organizing and staining those cabinet doors I took off the cupboard below the bathroom sink over a month ago. And now we’re living in the new house, things are all over the floor, paintings and photos. We have so much stuff. I thought we were getting rid of things along the way but somehow we didn’t lose enough.
And now an upbeat song by one of those young female vocalists like Avril Lagrine, or whatever her name is. I keep thinking my alarm has gone off, there’s so much noise in here now. Someone ordered an icy drink, the blender is blending, and the guitar accompanying the singer is going wild. I suddenly feel a sense of melancholy. Like maybe these trips I take for granted aren’t going to last forever. Dad is 83, and as I left him today after dropping off the girls I noticed the tremor in his hand was worse than ever. I love that man so much. Isn’t it just like life that you realize how much you love someone as the time they have left with you starts to get small, like a dot in the distance as you move away.
redravine.wordpress.com 
ybonesy,
The few times I’ve met your dad I was impressed and somewhat intimidated. I remember him as being very confident and sure.
Its good to have quality time with your dad.
The first time I met you was during Memorial Day weekend. Do you remember? We were all camping in Durango at the Iron (?) Creek campground and you and Jim just started seeing each other and you came with him in his red Ford F-150. Anyway, our “gang” was standing around the campfire trying to stay warm when you two drove up.
Memorial Day, in my late-twenties and early thirties, was all about Durango and the Iron Horse race. Now I’ve been overseas so long, I forget about these USA holidays, though I did watch the Indy 500 for a while today (until the rain postponed it.)
MM
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ybonesy: I feel the same sense of melancholy about part of my trip South coming up. What if it’s the last time I am down there with my mother? We kind of grew up down there together.
You captured it in these lovely lines:
Isn’t it just like life that you realize how much you love someone as the time they have left with you starts to get small, like a dot in the distance as you move away.
It’s good to notice the time we have with loved ones. And not take it for granted. Everything changes.
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[…] thinking of ybonesy near Taos with her father on their annual pilgrimage. Soon my mother and I will visit the graves of close loved ones and distant relatives in Georgia […]
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Funny you should recall that Memorial Day, MM. Jim was just saying how much he missed the annual trip to Durango for Iron Horse. Yep, I recall that trip very well. I’ve written about it a lot, too. It was a magical time.
I asked Jim if he wanted to go there again. Nah, he said. It’s a whole different generation there now. And you’re right. We all move into new places. Who would have thought all those years ago we would end up where we are??
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QM: I thought so much about you and all the intensive folks and artists and writers all over today as I was in Taos and up north. I couldn’t find my camera in all the mess of the move and leaving so early. And then I thought, oh well, now I won’t be trying to document it all for the blog. I could just sit back and enjoy.
But what I really want to say is traveling with a parent to a place you once belonged (on your own or together) is such a gift. And an impermanent one, yes? Maybe that’s the melancholy. I don’t know. It’s with me again. As frail as he’s getting, there’s no one else who makes me feel so safe.
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[…] to posts: PRACTICE – Memorial Day – 10min, PRACTICE: Memorial Day — 10min, May Day Self-Portrait: Searching For Spring, The Yogi (Cover Page) — 14/52, Nesting & […]
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