Vic Socotra

25 December 2010

Christmas Morn before Raven and Big Momma

(Downtown Petoskey, Christmas, 2010 looking toward the Flatiron Deli and the park.)
This is a solitary holiday in the little village above the Bay, a Christmas unlike any other I have ever experienced.

They say there is nothing new under the sun, and that is almost certainly the case. But this is unique for me, anyway, not that it is anything extraordinary. It is bleak, and that is nothing I associate with this special day in the precise middle of the season of the snow.

The snow is about a foot deep, but has not been refreshed by Mother Nature, so it is gray-black along the roads where the salt has been sprayed by the passing SUVs and trucks. There is plenty to consider out there in the wide world. The return of a little Ice Age is hammering air travel, and
They say that five hundred holiday flights have been cancelled.

I guess I am happy to be in the Bluesmobile, but still.

I have a hard time thinking beyond the finite limits of this journey. I miss my boys, and my extended family, and dread the time with the folks, which features long stretches of boredom punctuated by some acting out behavior by Raven, the husk of the man who is my father.

I read Christmas letters to Mom yesterday while Dad dozed in the chair by the window. The afternoon stretched on in a sort of fugue state, and eventually the shortness of the northern day made going out a matter of necessity, if the day was not to turn into another one of eternal row of them spent dozing and waking in the little apartment on the third floor of Potemkin Village.

Mom had forgotten some critical issue about the remote control- pushing the "Power" button was one, and the channel for Fox News was ultimately a bridge to far. I tuned it in and she was delighted. I have more than a touch of ADD myself, and this was oppressive in the extreme, though I gathered that it had been a week or more since Mom had any news.

Eventually we gathered everyone together, and I urged Raven to "hit the head" a phrase he no longer recalls with any meaning. I earnestly wanted to avoid an accident in the Police Cruiser, and I was gratified that he actually visited the bathroom, though what he did in there I have no knowledge.

We then took the elevator down to the lobby and out the double doors where I asked them to remain in place while I brought the car up. That worked. I drove with aimless purpose to burn the day, and was moderately surprised to see that some of Bill emerged from Raven with the stimulus of the road. He actually remembered the name of my first-born, wondering over the course of several partial sentences whether he would see him later that day.

He was quite animated about the power and smoothness of the ride in the big Cruiser. Being a car guy, I imagine the sensations were powerful enough to re-animate some distant recollections of powerful machines and years of precision driving.

We rolled up to the ski area at Nub's Nob, part of a thoroughly moderate sand bluff on the north reach of the bay left by the retreating glaciers of the last real Ice Age. It was sort of neat to have him briefly re-engage with the world. I parked in the loading zone and let him watch the skiers come down the hill to the chairlift.

Then I drove them back to Potemkin Village, and got them out of the Bluesmobile and asked them- no, told them- to wait in the lobby while I parked the car.

It could not have been three minutes from moving and shutting the vehicle down to entering the festively-decorated lobby and saw with horror that Raven was dropping his trousers.

I rushed over, yanked them up and reached around to button his pants closed. Mom looked on with dismay, and I am not sure if any of the more sentient seniors noticed from where they sat in the little conversation nook.

I have no idea what he thought he was doing. Unbuttoning his jacket and got it wrong? I don't know.

The social workers at the Senior Center say he needs 24 hour care, and there is no one in the business office to talk to about it, since the town is shut up tight for the holiday. I will try to figure out something on Monday or Tuesday while I am still here.

I am whining but don't know what to do. I can see that we are getting close to the next phase- Raven is boney-thin and Mom is a chatterbox of wonders and plans to do things she has already done. She has not got on the idea of her car and house, which has been a modest relief, but I have been on edge ever since I got here.

It was much more fun when I stopped in Ann Arbor on the way up and sang as front man and drummer for an improvised electric band in the improvised studio in my college buddy's house. Now that was fun.

I really enjoyed not being a grown up for a while, or better said, like my life and want no part of the one up here, though I am now responsible for it.

Ugh.

Merry Christmas,