(The garage waits. There are several projects lurking there, and the photo albums of a family now on both sides of the Great Divide. Yeah, I know. Those gutters are growing little pine trees. Photo Socotra.)

Strangest year of my life, I thought, sitting out on I-66 with a variety of fellow citizens, including one in a bright red SUV who seemed to be determined to run up the twin exhausts of the Iridium Silver Panzer.

I was headed for the Farm and projects that should not be deferred beyond the falling of the leaves and the coming of the snow. Hard winter, say the oaks, dropping a bumper crop of acorns, and oddly plump squirrels with plenty of fur.

Don-the-Builder was coming by to give me an estimate on some incidental work I have been meaning to get to, and this is the time.

Time, I thought, watching the brake lights ahead by the West Falls Church Metro station.

The traffic wasn’t going anywhere soon, and the bright skies of Arlington were transformed into lead in Fairfax County. I pulled off my Ray Bans and tucked them back in their tan leather holster. Back to the indoor glasses, and the leaves blowing across the creeping cars came into sharp focus.

Strangest year. Start off with the departure of the folks, and suddenly the parental umbilical, the cord that leads back beyond my first thoughts are abruptly sundered. I felt untethered at the time, and attacked the problems of the estate to distract me from the unsettling close approach of the void, the emptiness of the end.

Real estate transactions, sibling strife, miles and miles of highway. The accident that left me a gimp. The operation to correct it. Weeks and weeks in bed or a rolling chair. Too much time to think, looking up. That earthquake, epicenter in Mineral just up the road from the farm, and the crazy wind event that smacked the Capital and knocked the power out for six days.

Things started to move a little better after I inched past the Route 50 exit, and eventually I found the car rolling of its own accord toward the mountains, and to the real Virginia.

Too much thought, too many mysteries and fevered political tracts in the darkness. The growing feeling that something was really, really wrong, and there was not a goddamned thing I could do about it.

The would be the kind of really wrong that I used to feel about the ethereal evil beauty of the Weapons the Marines protected down in the magazines down below on the gray ships.

(Don’s guys have been busy. They replaced the rails that waved at the sky, and the one I burned with the grill. Photo Socotra).

I had been at the farm, trying to horse some estate debris out of a rented Infinity to pile up in the back room. Car emptied, I poured a glass of wine and strode out onto the back deck to discover that one of the railings had decided to reach toward the sky, warping dramatically, curling like an index finger, as if to beseech the clouds for more moisture to help free it from the structure of the deck altogether.

That had been hidden behind the cheap-ass grill I bought new, the one that had been crushed by that pine tree that came down in the Big Snow two years ago. I was moving the bowed frame onto a brick to make up for the missing wheel that had popped off the axel from the weight of the wood. In dragging the thing around, I found the impudent railing and its astonishing gesture for freedom.

And the fact that another section of railing had charred dramatically from the back of the red-hot grill. Interesting, I thought, that it had not just ignited and burned me to a crisp.

Better to be lucky than smart, and being neither naturally, I smiled at the idea of being alive.

Each light on Route 29 southbound drops off traffic. Past the Route 17 detachment, I always feel I am in the real Virginia, where Clark Brothers gun store and range rattle with semi-automatic weapons fire, seven days a week. People seem anxious for some reason.

South, past the pit of Big Country BBQ, Opal, VA’s contribution to the vinegar-based  culinary legacy long-haul trucker lore. Then, past the Spite House on Fleetwood Hill at Brandy Station, erected by a Romney Republican (I could see the signs) on the site of J.E.B. Stuart’s headquarters at the biggest cavalry battle of the biggest war fought- yet- in this hemisphere.

Don-the-Builder was to meet me at three, and I arrived with plenty of time to spare. The clouds drifted toward Washington, which embraces that sort of meteorological phenomenon as a kindred spirit to the opacity of its process. He told me on the phone that his guys had power-washed the front and back decks, and replaced the gesturing top rails.

He was waiting for everything to dry out before applying a thick coat of the colored sealant I had selected. I was interested in a quote on pavers to replace the log roundels that had marked the path from the back gate to original owner’s Garden of Solitude or Reflection or whatever she called it.

(The original owner’s Garden of Whatever. Panzer peeks out of camouflage in the rear).

Right on time, I heard the crunching of gravel and Don’s gray SUV pulled up.

We made the usual greetings and walked the house. I explained requirements and ideas: pavers, weathered door louvers, a flagpole, perhaps? We talked about what was under the vinyl siding and where things might be mounted. Along the way, we showed each other scars from the operations we had that summer. His were of a personal nature, and performed with minimum invasive techniques at U-VA hospital just down the road in Charlottesville. Mine were invasive, and done by the Army.

We agreed on a plan to complete the work underway, and look to his Cabinets lady to see if we could move the kitchen around, reconfiguring it so it would actually have some counter space. Once we covered the list, I offered to drive him over to meet the Russians.

“They love their land, and they are going great guns on clearing the old fields They may need some help with the house, though. 1910 was the year the main place went up.”

“I like that mirror,” said Don pointing at the big silver circle mounted to the mailbox. His voice contained a drawl softened by the distance from the Federal City. “It is going to save someone’s life some day.”

“If it is mine, that is good enough,” I said.

He appeared to like Matt and Tatiana, and I told them, by way of introduction, that Don had built my house and added the garage door openers and cool storm doors with the screens that roll right up when you raise the glass panel.

Don asked Matt how he liked it in Culpeper. Matt told him he loved it.

I told him I loved it. Don replied that we were all refugees here. “I came down in 1972,” he said in his gentle voice.

“We will all be down here, sooner or later,” I said. “If we can make it.”

I waved and left him with the Russian delegation, with the invitation to drink some wine later. Which is exactly what happened when Don was gone, and that alarming biker-guy in the drive turned out to be a respectful young man accompanied by his Biker Lady and two toddlers who was a whiz at trimming maples that might be ready to crush your house.

But that project was going to last into Sunday, with the roar of chainsaws, and I do not know if anyone will fall from the tree.

Yet.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com