Margins

I'm the last guy in the neighborhood to get his lawn mowed. The front is shaggy after all the rain and this was the ideal day to mow, cool and dry and a breeze. Instead, I took Mom to the Lincoln cafe in my new Rabbit. I got to drive and we both got to eat and we didn't discuss topics that are hard between us.

Mom commented about my Aunt Peg, from whom she hasn't heard in a while. "She's all mixed up with her family, over-involved," Mom said. I asked her what she meant.

"They're all involved in making each other's decisions, all involved in each other's lives. I'm glad we're not like that." She took a sip of her tea and we sat awkwardly for a second. "I like seeing you all from time to time. I like being on the margins of your lives."

To my mother, this is a virtue. I'm launched, grown up. She feels my intrusion into her zone of control, counting bottles and throwing away a rotten pear in the fruit bowl. She says "I can do that."

When I was a little boy I could name every car that passed by my house. I still recognize most automobiles and can name them. This skill occupies parts of my brain that could have been filled with tact, or discretion.

My family drove a 1963 Anglia. This is a '67, and ours was black, but you get the idea. It was different from everybody's car. Noteworthy among its characteristics were bucket seats, hinged at the front for rear seat access, with no lock to hold the seat back in the event of a sudden stop. In 1963 there were no requirements for safety belts.

In a sudden stop, my mother routinely threw her arm across my chest to restrain me.

Incidentally, Harry Potter's friend, George Weasley, drove this car to Hogwarts in the second movie. I think it was the second movie, anyway.

I believed that there were normal families, ones where dads went to work and mom's stayed home and dads had jobs other people understood, such as fireman, plumber, engineer at Boeing, and not "writer." Kids would ask what book my dad had written and I would say that he had not published a book yet. The would ask "What does he do?" And I would explain that he sits at a table and writes, and re-writes, and writes more. Other kids didn't get it. "But what does he do?"

I believed that normal families drove Buicks and Chrevrolets and probably voted Republican and ate t.v. dinners. I believed that they were different from us, driving in our little, finned English Ford. They owned their homes and had dependable jobs and dads who could handle small talk and corporate thought. They didn't move from town to town, after greener pastures.

I hope my kids come over for supper and bring their kids. I don't want to interfere in their lives, but I'd sure be willing to help. I hope my kids don't dread seeing me. I hope they feel that I contribute and support.

I do not wish to experience life from the margins.