Salvage

fragments from a past

Saturday, March 26, 2005

[Photo: Daddy Paul and me, Duarte, California, 1994.]

I found some recipes for soft cookies I'll make on the weekend to send my uncle. My mother's older brother, my "Daddy Paul," will turn 75 on Easter Sunday. The oven here has an unreliable thermostat, so I'll have to watch these cookies with special care as they bake. Chewing is an issue for him these days.

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My Scattered Family, 2005

I have an aunt in False Ontario (Southern California). At 62 she serves weekends at the L.A. county jail. She's moved in with her daughter now, who won't let her cats come in, and so each night she shuts them in her now-rank, civet-scented Civic. This sweet aunt used to keep a wing-broke bat. She fed it meal worms every evening when she got home from work, and then it would crawl around on the front of her shirt while she did her evening chores. She spent $300 on the series of rabies shots, just in case.

My other aunt, who's 64, in White Castle (on the skirts of Baton Rouge), tames feral cats for rescuers and transports adopted dogs from state to state and keeps parrots and sleeps with a four-foot iguana. For a few years long ago she bred pythons and Doberman Pinschers, and would send us holiday photos of her toddlers sitting on a king-sized bed surrounded by snakes.

My uncle lives alone in Wikieup. He gave away his lovebirds and his dog, because he just can't stand it anymore when pets get old or sick and die. He waters his bromeliads and drinks near-beer in a double-wide, and every night he sits in the silence and listens to the awkward rattle of his patched-together heart.

His son, my cousin, 48, serves time not all that far from here. He finds and loses Jesus every year or two. His prison life is such a comfort to us all. Price of admission this time around--taking 27 leather coats from a broke-and-entered storefront in a shopping mall, because, he wrote me, "What the hell. God never listens to me anyway."

7:12:42 PM

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