Patio

Nothing arrives like a ton of bricks except a ton of bricks.  Our ton arrived a couple of days ago, and was quickly dispersed by Dave and Juan, patio makers for hire.  It was all dramatic and disruptive.  First, one guy knocking on our door and assuring me that he really did have a ton of bricks, and would I please sign here, and he couldn't get the bricks all the way in the carport, and was this okay?  What followed was a great postindustrial moment, a man in a forklift, origin unclear, bouncing down our driveway with his ton.  Whirring, almost silent, the ton dropped like an ounce.  And then he was gone and then we had a brick pile, taller than a man, easily a cubit, or some portion of a cubit, the measurement favored by Noah, all of it there and shrink-wrapped, just like something you'd buy at Costco.  In fact, like something you would buy two of at Costco.  Stolid, indomitable, immovable.  Like a giant brick of bricks.

Dave and Juan work at mysterious hours, charge mysterious rates, and produce mysterious results.  Our task was simple.  The patio outside our apartment was a little-used affair, approximately as inviting as the Alamogordo nuclear test site.  Although no bomb had gone off there, a sort of time bomb was ticking.  No, it had stopped ticking.  In fact, time had bombed the place rather unpleasantly, some time ago and now had no time for us.  It is hard to say what was wrong.  The concrete was badly cracked, that was part of it.  The ancient shrubs, now of a tree dimension, had crowded out the space the way unpleasant people do in a rush-hour subway.  And like the subway, you didn't want to be there.  Worse, I couldn't really get there, not easily.  Oh, it was possible to park my wheelchair at a slant on the wooden ramp, stand up and crutch to a patio chair.  The only problem for this quadriplegic was that if you wanted to, say, carry a book or a cup of coffee outside, it was more or less impossible.  If urinary necessity overtook you at its usual rate, by the time you were on your spastic feet, it was too late.  I can't recall when I last bothered to actually sit in our patio.

But then came the dawn, and with it Dave and Juan.  Their first construction, a wooden frame, formed around the edges of our existing patio, braced with wooden stakes.  This had the general feel of adobe making in my fourth grade class.  A wooden outline, clay in the middle.  But in this case, sand in the middle.  Now all the mestizo origins are blurring in my mind...sand painting, adobe forming....  It all seems mysterious, transformative.  The sand is as pure as driven...sand.  It comes in bags labeled unmysteriously beach sand from Monterey.  Each bag costs money.  That is the real mystery.  The beach is free, after all.  Free Willy.  Free Monterey.  No free patio, however, for we haven't had an estimate.  Dave, the spokesperson, is evasive on this point.  Not much, he tells me.

The madness underneath all this cannot be fathomed.  One has to hang out at Roble Ave., Menlo Park, and for a considerable time, say, at least five years, before the socio-econometric reality even comes weakly into focus.  I rent.  This is the essential point.  I do not own, and neither does Marlou, one square inch of our supposed property.  This patio, laughingly "our patio," is actually Tom's patio.  Tom, owner, landlord, life partner and neighbor, holds the deed.  He also holds the past, holds it close to his chest, dearly.  The 1967 Charger in our carport is not, as visitors assume, Tom's classic car.  It is, simply, Tom's second car.  Actually, it may not even be second.  It is simply Tom's other car.  It's age?  Irrelevant.  It runs.  It is Tom's.  It has been Tom's since the Johnson Administration.

I was once a property owner, a circumstance bound up in my first marriage, which included in-laws in the construction business and enabled me to learn precious little about dealing with contractors.  Perhaps that's why so much of the patio makeover now under way has eluded my consciousness.  Certainly, it has escaped my attention.  While I have been marveling at the sand and the boards, Dave has been having a go at the camellias.  Marlou is still in tears over this.  I missed the actual event, but then, few people actually saw the planes hit the twin towers.  Suffice it to say that when day was done, so was the camellia.  What he would describe as trimming, Marlou would testify in court was actually clearcutting.  We now have distinctly less camellia than we did before.  Not to worry.  I just found something on the web about camellia pruning, which I have e-mailed to Marlou in the front room, and I will be halfway into the next county by the time she reads this...the gist being that you can whack camellias all to hell, and they might end up trees and they might end up shrubs, or even ground-hugging botanical gnomes like the bristlecone pine.  Never mind.  She isn't happy.

But only on this point.  True, there has been a search-and-destroy mission against the camellias, but the overall mission must be counted a success.  Part of this, I take full credit for.  Standing on the wheelchair ramp, rising to stretch my weary back while Dave and Juan worked theirs, I saw it: the southeast passage.  We had been talking about how to get the wheelchair off its wooden ramp and onto the new brick patio, and it seemed the only solution was a concrete incline.  This would have taken up space, involved some uncomfortable tilting of my wheelchair -- but now, this wasn't necessary.  With the camellias machete-hacked into minimalism, there was an opening.  Now I could wheel myself into the patio from the opposite side.  All it took was a few more bricks, and there it was, the orange brick road.  Follow, follow, follow.

I can't see what is so pleasing about the new brick world of our patio.  There's no mortar.  The thing consists of bricks and sand, and it seems capable of shifting.  So does Tom.  I can tell he's quite distraught over the camellias.  I think they were his mother's favorites.  Marlou would share this opinion of them.  Me, I believe it will all grow back.  Different, of course, but what isn't?  What seems odd to me is that the patio is exactly the same size.  OK, it's a little easier to get into.  But I still don't own it, and the whole thing feels tenuous, and it is absolutely no bigger.  Same size, different surface, comprised of designer bricks that cost 10 times more than the shoddy brick-colored ones on sale at Home Depot.  And I'm happy.  Now we have a patio that feels like our patio, but isn't.  Just as Marlou and I could probably describe similar feelings about our life.  It's not exactly ours.  It can be taken away.  So meanwhile, enjoy it, treat it with respect, and enjoy it.