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Packing
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words.
-- William Shakespeare
Saturday, April 17, 1998
One year ago: Thanks
A year ago, I ran into the guy who posted a notice at work, that first drew me to the Century Ballroom where I learned to dance. We never know what far-reaching effects might come from a little thing that we do. I'm sure he never thought about changing someone's life when he told us they were having swing dancing with a free lesson, a few blocks from my house.
* * * * * * * *
Jack had trouble getting to sleep, suffering coughing fits from the cold he is getting over. So I let him sleep late, and finally finished the Vernor Vinge book I've been reading over the last few weeks, A Deepness in the Sky. Wow! The only reason it took me so long to finish the book was the physical size of it, about eight hundred pages. But he handles a complex story with ease, jumping from one set of characters to another, and tightening the suspense screws till I could hardly stand it. Jack was surprised, after he got up, to see me start paging through to reread certain sections. I wanted to review how Vinge had achieved various effects, changes of viewpoint and so on, because it had been so many days since I'd started it. I don't know how alien the aliens really are, though. They seemed almost too understandable.
In the afternoon, we worked on packing up A----'s stuff. Jack's older daughter (who ran away a few weeks ago and still won't come back to live with him) will be staying with Jack's sister, who also lives in Olympia with her young son. I know this is very hard for Jack. I still hope that A--- will straighten herself out sometime, and not make bad choices now that will dig her into a hole that she won't be able to get out of.
I tried to do most of the stuff that involved bending, to save Jack's back from stress. We had some stuff to throw away, and some to donate or sell in a garage sale, but the majority will go down to her. I felt really sad during this work. I was frustrated when Jack and I were talking about the whole thing, since there wasn't anything I could say that could help him. I was also slightly irked when he intimated that he'd already considered all the stuff I was coming up with, about how lots of teens have troubled years but turn out all right, or that he'd been doing the best he could and there's a lot of luck involved, and that it didn't change how he felt. Frustrated that I couldn't "fix" this, and stifled, that I couldn't come up with a way to think about this that was new to him.
* * * * * * * *
Jack decided that he wanted to grill some burgers for dinner, then expanded this to wanting to also cook the Spanish mushrooms that he learned to fix during his Air Force days. This was an extension of a grocery store errand that was at first only for getting trash bags to pack A----'s room with. So I grilled the burgers on Jack's small gas grill on the back deck, and Jack sauteed sliced mushrooms, green olives, garlic, Worchester sauce, and olive oil -- a tapas snack. It was good, but salty! since it was designed to make you keep drinking in a tavern. I liked it when I mixed it with the baked potato, though.
We watched one anime video, written and directed by Jack's fave Shirow, but the second one he put on didn't thrill me, so we didn't watch it all the way through.
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