enough

On the way to work today I wasn’t in the best of moods, I really didn’t want to get up, and it seemed dreary and uninviting outside in the big grey world. But I dutifully went and on the way started listening to a new audio book.

I usually like mysteries but when I had gone to the used bookstore in town this weekend there wasn’t much. I was leaving with pursed lips when the owner said “hey Ed, the wife and I were listening to something lately and you might like it”. I asked what it was called and he allowed as he didn’t know. “I try and drive the car and she is in charge or taking in and out and re-winding and all of that.”

So it was called “Havana”. I immediately thought of that Robert Redford movie a few years back that never did anything. You can’t go by that though. Sometimes a book will have the same title as a movie with no relation. I read a book called “Lost in Translation”, by Nicole Menes and it had nothing to do with the Bill Murray movie, although I liked them both.

It starts out in Cuba and they are talking of assassinating Fidel. Then it switches to Siberia and some prisoners there. One prisoner named 4715 is playing another guy cards. The pot is a cockroach. They are starving and the cockroach is protein, he makes a very big deal about eating it, even going so far as giving a speech, none to the pleasure of his bunkmates.

He is then called into the office or whatever and allowed a hot shower to clean up for a visit. His describing of the shower and soap, something he had been without for months, or maybe years, was very funny. It put me in a good mood just thinking about someone so hard up a cockroach and a shower made them feel happiness, in the first time, in a long time. I smiled while driving in.

For some reason, just now, I was thinking of when I first left home. My parents had wanted to charge me room and board. I was going to school, and working a job, but that wasn’t enough I guess. They threw out a figure of $125.00 a month! I laughed at them. Why on earth would I pay THAT, I asked, when I have no privacy here?

I started looking in old Everett, in large old houses by the water, on the hill above the paper plants. Many had been turned into rooming houses and were cheap. I looked and looked. Finally I moved in with my girlfriend. We had nothing.

When I moved out I had assumed my bedroom furniture was mine. My parents however, had other ideas. They said they had paid for it and tried to sell it to me if I remember right. I told them by no means, they should keep it, and treasure it.

My girl did better, her parents let her have her single wide bed, tiny dresser and maybe a night stand. That was it, all we had.

Amazingly, we rented a two bedroom apartment in Lynnwood with hardwood floors, a deck, and a fireplace for $150.00 a month. I remember sitting on the shag carpeting together, sitting with our rumps flat on the floor not a stick of furniture in sight. We looked into each others eyes and laughed, a silly, childish, game-playing, mirthful laugh.
We were playing the game called “grown-ups” and so far we were losing. But we had each other and that was enough.