So, What About The Trailer Park?

Let's start with the opening lyrics of the old Johnny Cash song 'Boy Named Sue':
"My Daddy left home when I was three,
He didn't leave much for Ma and me,
Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze"
'Boy Named Sue' came out in 1969, several years after the very real family cataclysm that happened when I was about 3.  Mom would hear me singing the tune and comment that we didn't get the guitar...

In any case, one of the big changes resulting from The Divorce in 1962 was that not long after, Mom, myself, and three siblings, ended up in an 8 feet wide by 32 feet long mobile home, or, as we always called it, a trailer.  Oddly enough, to my pre-school eyes, being one of five people packed into 256 square feet of aluminum siding and wood panelling did not seem crowded.  That move, from our somewhat typical 2-bedroom house to the other side of town was the beginning of a decade of trailer park living.  We ended up right across the street from a child-less middle-aged couple whose quiet neighborliness would alter the pattern of our lives in dramatic fashion...

Vitamin D Therapy

Maybe it is too many days of leaving at dawn, coming home in the dark and spending the interim under fluorescent lighting.  Today I'm sick with a sinus infection and not up to the commute.  But still working.  After several hours plopped in a recliner clacking away on my laptop PC, the malady is wearing on me.  My eyes are tired.  I need a change.  Instinctively, I meander out the back door, find one of our old patio chairs with the floppy, weather-beaten cushions and arrange it to take advantage of the winter sun.  I nestle into the chair, lay my head back and soon feel the heat penetrate pants, shirt and skin down to my bones, seemingly.  My eyes are closed.  I'm near dozing.  Then, I feel something brush my shins and know what is going to happen next.  First one paw, then another, then the weight of a cat gingerly nestles onto my lap.  I peek down to confirm my suspicions.  It is Robby, short for Robert Malcolm, one of three cats who live with us.  Born with only a stub for a tail, I have long sworn that part of his brain is missing as well.  For his first year, Robby had bladder control issues.  In the house.  We banished him to the outdoors and garage.  He drinks by dipping his paw into the water dish and licking it off.  He doesn't get that I am not the cat lover my daughters are.  I desperately hoped a local coyote would find him and reduce our cat food requirements.  Somehow, he survived and grew out of his 'problem'. So, here he is, curled up on my lap while I let the sun bake the germs out of my body.   Robby cannot explain, nor can I, the odd camaraderie we share sitting there, a middle-aged man and a middle-aged cat soaking in sunlight.  I give him a scratch or two under chin and behind ears, then return to my thoughtless reverie.  Sometime later, Robby climbs down, hinting that he and I both have had enough sunshine and need to find some shade.

New Year, New Day

Sitting at the breakfast table looking out the window. The back yard is moist with last night's fog and the top rail of the chain-link fence is adorned with dew-drops along its length. As the sunlight peeks over the hill, simple beads of water are transformed into jewels. Here, a ruby, there an emerald, further on a garnet. A slight movement of eyes or head and the ruby becomes an amethyst, then a sapphire. All that brilliance hidden in the ray of light unleashed millions of miles away to refract into my eyes on this morning. I munch and marvel.

The same light brings warmth and soon the fence is steaming. The dewdrops shrink and are gone, taking their treasure with them, reminding me that I, too, need to move on with my day, one last day of leisure before returning to the routine of work...