Morning

It is not even 6 AM, but I am alone in my apartment and experiencing a moment of digestive uncertainty that makes me want to be out of bed and in my wheelchair.  It is dark.  This condition often prevails at night, and it would be unwise to take this personally, yet I do.  In the dark, proprioception muted by bad neurology, my sitting up brings a moment of spatial confusion.  I have to get my neck straight, then the light on, before it all makes neuromuscular sense.  

What to do with such an ungodly hour except get on with the day?  There's something much less daunting about slipping on blue jeans with no underwear and yanking on a pullover.  The garment count numbers two.  No, this does not include shoes and socks.  But where there's a will, there's a quadriplegic way.  In terms of facing the outside world, this means slipping on slip-ons, i.e., tieless shoes without socks.  This is actually a recent discovery, and the process takes seconds, and I am now prepared to face the outside world.  Which does mean I have made a critical morning decision.  We, I, whoever appears to be in control of things this morning are, am, going out for coffee.

I have a somewhat suicidal habit of turning up the speed control to maximum and bouncing my wheelchair the wrong way down the freshly paved length of Live Oak Ave.  And why not?  Menlo Park, a.k.a., Mellow Park, somehow produces a rush-hour without traffic.  Oh, the cars get a bit enthusiastic on the north/south thoroughfare of El Camino, but their frenzy is a mild one and does not last long.  Meanwhile, I have almost a quarter-mile of unobstructed, smooth sailing down the morning pavement before I turn at the recently poured concrete driveway by the mortuary, leading me to the sidewalk without a bump.

I suppose if you're a writer and feel the richness of small-town Americana, living in one thinly populated place for the duration...well, that's the thing to do.  Won't be long before you've got a Spoon River Anthology and everyone is looking for the Grover's Corners Mall.  The problem lies not in the writing, but in the experiencing.  Which is what's happening to me right now.  I have been zipping past the Spangler Brothers mortuary for more than 15 years, always puzzled by its somewhat blank expanse...such a large, single-story building...and a big empty parking lot.  All of which gets heavy, albeit periodic, use.  The funeral of a local policeman, killed in the line of duty, jammed the place and literally shut down Live Oak Ave.  Which, if you are of a writerly disposition, gives you a working title: 'Dead Cop on Live Oak.'

In short, there's no getting away from reminders.  That's the upside, and the downside, of being so rooted in small-town life.  The other downside involves arriving at Café Borrone at the unfortunate hour of 8:15 AM, short on caffeine, even more undersupplied for patience, and finding a queue out the door.  Nothing wrong with a queue, but a quick glance at the distant counter explains why the line isn't moving.  Only one guy at the cash register.  It doesn't take a lot of small-town savvy to figure out the next step.  I roll to the crêpe joint by the railway station.

As for the crêperie, I don't know whether to exult or lament.  Rolling by the place, it is hard to tell if business is underway.  The door is unlocked, so I go inside.  The menu is unchanged.  It is difficult to know if I should order at the counter, take a seat or go home.  I choose a middle course.  I order at the counter, grab a table outside, and do not go home.  After all, there is some chance that, over a period of time, a goat cheese gallette will arrive.  All of which, in my current mood, may or may not be a good thing.  This place offers enormous privacy.  And since my mornings tend to be sad and reflective, this could be just what the doctor ordered.

Sadly, Marlou's broker ordered up heavy doses of Exxon stock.  I just learned this yesterday, for I have finally...months too late...gotten down to the routine and appropriate business of dealing with the trust I inherited.  I have sought financial advice.  I've even attempted to understand bonds.  But looking at investment statements...I don't know, the resistance can't be explained.  I just haven't wanted to do it.

But okay, there it is, and amidst the usual batch of mutual funds, Marlou has singled out a couple of individual stocks that she wanted to have for her very own.  I probably absorb a certain dose of Exxon through my own mutual funds.  But the level of toxicity seems higher when you mainline, buying the securities outright.  It's like the pharmaceutical contents of one of the sleeping pills prescribed to me after Marlou's death.  Who knows what's in the thing?  There might be something much more honest and straightforward in saying to my local drug pusher, 'give me 10 hits of pure Afghan heroin, and hold the methamphetamine.'  As someone who was not long ago making a living as a technology-journalist-for-hire, and often bragging of my additional skills as a science writer, I am not unaware of the Exxon opportunity.  The company made it known to the PR and writing and television production community that it was going to spend over $100 million to explain away global warming.

Which is why I need a moment alone with my single macchiato...I had ordered a double, thank you very much...my expansive crêpe and the morning fog.  Sell the stock?  It doesn't matter.  Think about Marlou?  Oh, it does matter.  Exxon was something I needed to argue about.  Did she?  Certainly not, at least consciously.  Did we?  Yes, I believe we, the couple, did.  She had her background, I had mine, and we were never going to understand each other.  But we might have understood our misunderstanding.  And if that sounds silly, it's because I'm conveying the letter of the law, not the spirit.  The spirit is the thing that flicks its tail.  To quote the great avatar, Woody Allen, a relationship, like a shark, has to move forward.

And in this moment the morning's sadness coalesces into a truth.  That this was as far as Marlou came in life.  She was a very sensitive, very private, woman who found too much protection in her parents as a child...and struggled to free herself, as best she could, in midlife.  She freed me from something too, a certain lonely pessimism.  And the Exxon stock?  Well it was certainly her way of saying 'this is what I want' -- and maybe even 'fuck you, Paul with your superior liberal ways.'  And the sad part?  Well that's a collective sadness, something much of America shares.  It is the lonely sound of 'me.'  A wrong note played loudly in the quietest moment of a symphony.  Which sounds right if you literally don't know the score.  Or hate music.  Which wasn't true of Marlou.  And if this Exxon stock smacks of social alienation...and makes me wonder how my departed wife would have adjusted to a changing world...I may find the joke is on me.  The world could horribly change in her direction.  

What matters is that Marlou found a new direction in me, and proceeded down that course as long and as well as she could.  And now it's over.  Sometimes the road ends.  And we barely see the dead-end sign.  Before we have to drive our wheelchair around to the Spangler Mortuary entrance, which proves to be in the back, hidden from the street.  After which you're left with a curiously heavy box, a lot of unanswered questions and the certainty that the quality of humanity, even of love itself, has much to do with the distance we travel in life.