On Watching My Father Move Out of the Apartment Next Door in the Rain

It's been a dozen years since my father died, yet his belongings were strewn in the parking lot the other day. They weren't my actual father's possessions, but those of the old man next door who passed away three years ago.

I never met my deceased neighbor, since I've only lived here a year and a half, yet from the clothing spewing from the top of a box I know he was slim and not particularly tall. He liked to stay in shape as evidenced from his bicycle, golf shoes, and golf clubs. He owned the same model canister vacuum cleaner as my father, and much of his scratched up furniture he'd been using since the late 60's like my dad, the kind of furnishings for a man who lived many years alone. The crew clearing out his condo split the man's favorite chair in two- a mustard yellow, crushed velvet recliner with headrest-  and dumped it in the back of a pickup. They also snapped the legs off the man's desk and hurled that in back.

The house cleaners may have pinched the portable TV set and VCR.

Dad had a dot matrix printer like the old man's, along with a brown Samsonite from the days before suitcase companies added collapsible handles and wheels to their luggage. One of my neighbors culled the set of 1955 encyclopedias lying on the ground. My dad still owned his 1958 World Book set when he died.

I almost ran down the steps to ask if I could have the aluminum lawn chair. It was one of those with nylon straps woven in a cross-hatch pattern. After my mother died and we moved across the country, my brother, father and I used a couple of those as living room furniture until our storage arrived. Years later, dad used those lawn chairs as additional seating when he held parties.

Was there no family left to take any of these things? Or had they already grabbed the good stuff? The property manager told me the old man had a daughter, but she was either unable or unwilling to pay her late father's HOA. The property is now owned by someone who flips houses.

I'm going to miss my dead neighbor. He was quiet. And I miss my father every day.

I hope you'll turn in to my next podcast. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/authorsontheairradio2/2017/01/16/celebrate-release-day-live-with-stacy-trombley-for-pushing-the-boundaries

Songs Are Like Tattoos

Day 3 of The Scintilla Project where the goal is to write a response to a prompt every day for two weeks. Today’s prompts are 1.) Talk about a memory triggered by a particular song, or 2.) what’s the story of your most difficult challenge in a relationship?

Funny how small things spark memories.

The smell of Jergen’s hand lotion floods me with memories of my mother’s hands. She would purposely pour out excess lotion, and say to me, “Oh look, I have too much. Bring me your hands.” She would grasp my fingers and our hands danced off the excess fluid.

I can’t clean the cat box without thinking about George Clooney (who ironically was arrested today). On a talk show Clooney a few years ago described an incident where a former roommate was sloppy about keeping the litter box clean. One day George himself pooped in the cat box. After that the roommate was vigilant about cleaning up after his cat.

Songs trigger permanent memories, too.

I was one of those kids who never wanted to go to bed. I might miss something. My mother had to bribe me with putting music on the Hi-Fi (For those of you under fifty, the Hi-Fi is a precursor to the stereo. It had a turntable for 45s (singles) or 33s (albums) and a solitary, giant speaker. And a closeable lid. It was an attractive piece of blonde wood furniture that could double as a table for a vase in front of a window. At bedtime, Mom would place up to five records at a time and bank on my brothers and I being asleep by the time the last album dropped onto the turntable. Her taste in music was eclectic. The best music to get elementary and junior high kids to sleep, (and most likely invite some romance with my dad if he wasn’t out of town) was jazz. My parents’ collection included greats like John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Gene Ammons, Ella Fitzgerald, Les and Larry Elgart, George Shearing and Thelonuius Monk. If Dad wasn’t home, Mom might select Etta James, B.B. King, or Louis Armstrong. We all liked show tunes, and owned soundtracks for West Side Story, Gypsy, South Pacific and Auntie Mame.

By the time we were teenagers, each of us had or own stereos( and headphones.), and our tastes grew more divergent, and my flavor in music devolved to The Monkees and David Cassidy.

My mother died a month after I turned sixteen, and I couldn’t listen to music that reminded me of her. The somber tones of Tchaikovksy and Sibelius cushioned me, provided a new soundtrack for my life that included years of veiled depression.

It’s too much of a cliché to say writing saved me. Writing was only part of the equation.

I listen to music when I write, paint, clean house, and read. Music plays in my car as I drive. I hate to fly, so in the 80’s and 90’s I carted cassette and CD players on board, and now my ipod serenades me to relax while 30,000 feet above.

I can’t identify a specific song as my favorite. In high school I ritually wallowed in broken-hearted breakups with boys during my Joni Mitchell years. (Her Blue album always sent me further inside my blues.) The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” is a great driving song, and Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight” is my karaoke staple.

My first kiss and quasi boyfriend had a song: “In My Life,” by the Beatles. “There are places I remember….some are gone and some remain...In my life I have loved them all.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZpVxLjqXPE


Happy Writing.