Monday, 9/20/10
Dad showed up in the store as I was wrapping up my deposits from the weekend. “Are you heading to the bank?”
“Soon. do you want to come with me?”
“I could go for a toasted bagel with cream cheese.”
“So could I. I’ll sit down with you.”
“We’ll sit down after we get back from the bank.”
“Good, that way I won’t leave the money on the chair like I did the other day when Louis called and I completely forgot about the money.”
“What was in it, some singles?”
“No it was my deposit, I got distracted and forgot it was there. It was a good thing you found it.”
By now we are walking to the bank together. “Remember Max the bookie?” Dad asks me, then continues, “Max was a bookie, you don’t remember him, he was short and stocky, used the phone booth, and left a bag of money, came back a couple of hours later, his face was white, the money was still in the phone booth. My friend Harry. (from the hosiery next door) used him. Harry liked to bet on baseball, one time he bet on Cincinnati, they took an 11 run lead…” My phone rings, we are just outside the bank, it’s Jackie, Dad goes into the bank. I stay outside and talk to Jackie. She's just checking in, I tell her how Dad keeps telling me stories, I need to write them down, I wish I could recreate his language, the way he tells them to me. A few minutes later he comes back out and takes the money bags from me to bring to the teller for me. A few minutes later I follow him in and then after we leave the bank I remember, “So what happened with Harry’s bet?” “ The other team came back and won the game in extra innings.” “Betting baseball is a crapshoot.”
We walk back to the store and have coffee and bagels, I read the sports section to him. I tell him in a monologue of my own, "The Mets are now mathematically eliminated. They play Florida tomorrow, I guess those games mean something they are fighting for 3rd place. Atlanta plays Philadelphia those games mean something, The San Francisco Giants are in first place, so are the Yankees, the Mets are done, stick a fork in them."
Today is the actual day my mom died in 1999. The birthday of my dear cousin Rachel, who died in that terrible car accident in November of 1996 with her father, my dear beloved Uncle Howie. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of all 3 of them.
Today felt like my official back to reality, back to work, Monday, trying to deal with all these little work things that have been piling up on my desk or in my mind. There is still one computer/register issue that I need to deal with. I already tried one day for an hour or so to get this issue resolved, but I failed. It was the one thing I didn't deal with today. And then the ice maker stopped working over the weekend, the refrigeration guy did a major cleaning on it on Friday while I was deep cleaning the produce case which he fixed for me, but now the ice maker isn’t making ice, but the produce case appears to be working well. I did have my head literally inside of it for about 2 hours cleaning and scrubbing on Friday before quitting work early and heading to temple… Blah blah blah, I don’t think any of that made any sense, but oh well. It was a Monday, payroll, bill paying, odds and ends, thinking of doing all this refinancing, ugh, it was a work day, but I’m feeling good, feeling centered, looking forward to the fall, which begins tomorrow! And tonight when the sun goes down in the west, the moon and Jupiter should rise in the east, it’s another beautiful evening, blue sky and white clouds over Ramshorn…
No comments:
Post a Comment