I’m not sure how many “parts” the story of my parents’ move will have. It is, to be sure, my parents’ tale, although I’ll do the telling. Like my parents, this story is not neat and tidy, as I would have it – and them – be. But then they’d tell you that I’m obsessive, they’d tell you the fault lies with them for potty training me at age 2.
They say they never potty trained my sister. She’s nearly 41. I’d rather be me.
My parents, at my urging, decided to sell their house. They found a lovely independent living community, complete with a movie theater and Friday night happy hours. I offered to spend a day or two a week at their house. Our plan was to go through each room, closet, cabinet. We would pack. We would donate. We would, Mother Earth forgive us, discard.
Preparing to move is an arduous task for anyone. Even more so when you’re 81 and have Parkinson’s disease. Or if you’re like my mom – asthmatic, legally blind, partial vision loss in one eye.
When the vision loss began two years ago, I told my mom that she had become One-Eyed Willie, the lost pirate in The Goonies. A few times, I tagged along on her ophthalmologist appointments, calling her Willie the whole time. I thought I was very funny.
Willie, grumpy as I assume most pirates to be, did not think I was funny. So I pointed out my dad, whom I’ve always felt bore a passing resemblance to Harrison Ford, is Indiana Jones. And Willie was the name of the Bond-ish Girl in Temple of Doom. I emphasized how perfectly the nickname fit.
Well, if Willie wasn’t thrilled at being called a pirate, she was even less thrilled at being called a vapid showgirl. She also firmly disagreed with me on the Harrison Ford bit. My dad most certainly didn’t resemble Harrison Ford that day or any other.
Like mothers everywhere, Willie knew that she was right. Like daughters everywhere, I knew I was the one on legitimate ground. And since this is my column and not Willie’s, I get to think of my parents as Indy and Willie.
As I helped Indy and Willie pack fifty years into a two-bedroom apartment, a pattern began to emerge. Willie would express uncertainty over an item unearthed in the house. A bag of fabric, say, or a framed needlepoint. The item’s presence was heretofore unknown. But now that it had been discovered, perhaps she could use it. But should she really be bringing something she didn’t even know existed to an apartment so small?
Indy had a whole different set of problems. Willie was often telling him that things he wanted to keep – like his tools – could not accompany him to the apartment. There simply wasn’t enough room, especially if Willie was packing random bags of fabric and kitschy needlepoints.
These exchanges reduced my heart – already battered from Willie’s traumatic hospitalization and Indy’s Parkinson’s – to smithereens. It lay shattered beneath my sternum, screaming with pain each time Indy and Willie had to decide what was worthy of living out the rest of its life in their tiny two-bedroom.
So I became Short Round, tossing Indy’s whip in the nick of time, pulling them out of what really amounted to inconsequential decisions but felt like so much more. To Willie, I’d say give me the bag of fabric, the needlepoint. I’ll keep it at my house. Get settled. If there’s room, great. If not, that bag of fabric can stay with me until you figure out where it belongs. And for God’s sake, don’t hang that tacky needlepoint.
I’m sure you recognize this gesture qualifies me for martyrdom. You know I don’t like stuff. A boyfriend once called my bedroom Spartan. My girlfriends called it The Oasis – my bedroom was free of the rubble they traversed in the rest of my parents’ house. I won’t turn it down if you nominate me for a Nobel or something. Also, don’t expect me to keep it. A medal is just more stuff.
I had to handle Indy somewhat differently. Whenever he was instructed to do away with his nonessentials, I’d get him alone. I’d say give me your tools/ box of random wires/ picture you think is Hitler. I’ll keep it at my house. I’ll sneak it to the apartment if you ever need it.
The presumed Hitler picture is a whole other story.
Now Indy is always fine to store stuff at my house. In fact, he often volunteers my house for storage. Indy thinks I can do anything and while Indy is right, having all that stuff at my house pushes my limits.
Willie, conversely, feels deep guilt for storing anything at my house. I think she should feel deep guilt for having a 41-year-old daughter who isn’t potty trained, but whatever keeps you up at night is whatever keeps you up at night, you know?
And here we are a year later. I have an entire sewing machine – the machine itself, the housing table, the bench, all of the thread and fabric, needles and stick pins – holed up in my playroom. Willie’s Nightingale Award is in a shoebox in my bedroom closet. A fake Christmas tree was evicted from my aunt’s basement, emergency housing proffered by my garage. Books Indy never read but got for a really good price at a flea market lay scattered about my house like a rash.
But the frozen French fries take the cake.
This story may be my parents’, but it is another freezer story. It’s as though 2019 was determined to be my Year Of The Freezer. I think that’s how I’ll always remember it. Maybe messing with my freezer is how I identify love.
My parents’ former home, like my current one, had not only a standard refrigerator but a chest freezer. Their house didn’t have a garage – thank you, Universe. I’d still be packing if it did – so the chest freezer resided in the laundry room at the back of their home.
The new apartment has a beautiful refrigerator- a black side-by-side that gleams, makes ice, and really fits jack all in the freezer. One night, while I was at the kids’ karate class, Indy called me. My parents were still in their house, the move not yet made.
Indy had a box of frozen goodies that he needed me to keep in my freezer. I believe these frozen edibles were of vital importance to national security. The provisions could not – COULD NOT – stay at my parents’ house. Indy needed me to come get them. Now.
I was not close to their house. This errand was going to take me a good hour. More, if you count the time spent unpacking everything into my freezer. My evening schedule is strict. By 8 P.M. I am required to be in my pajamas, enjoying a lava cake, a cold beer, and a good book. Ooh – or a good show! Have you guys watched The Punisher on Netflix? Jon Bernthal is totally one of my gimmes.
Well Jon was just going to have wait that night. I picked up the box of frozen food. And no. Indy didn’t tell me why I had to take it. He only just told my mother he once guarded a nuclear site when he was a Marine and he’s known her since 1968. I’m thinking the box of frozen food will maybe be a deathbed confession.
Arriving home, I ignored Don’s perplexed looks and began unpacking. To be fair, there were some normal frozen goodies. Ore-Ida tater-tots and such. But there’s no honor in talking about your parents’ hockey-puck burger patties.
The box held a dozen bags of Sargento shredded cheese. A dozen! They’re two people. One family-sized dinner recipe lasts them two to three days. Also, who freezes shredded cheese? Or any cheese?
Six ravioli lay encased in a snack-sized resealable bag. Were they special in some way? Unable to be eaten with the rest of their carbohydrate friends? Were they being saved for a night when someone was only slightly hungry? Would my parents divide them evenly – three apiece?
Once Indy and Willie moved, it was my job to empty the chest freezer. I’m not sure how this task was assigned to me. I have my suspicions, though, because of the way that job reached its terminus.
I must have been feeling optimistic. I only brought three paper grocery bags to haul their frozen hoard to the apartment. Those bags were quickly filled by the entire ham, whole turkey, and three bed pillow-sized bags of vegetables occupying the chest freezer.
I removed bag after bag of crystallized carrots. Meat in every form it is presented by modern supermarkets. Mystery bags filled with things I hoped wouldn’t defrost in my car.
Arriving at the apartment, I quickly filled the freezer. The laundry baskets I’d filled with the overflow from the grocery bags stubbornly refused to empty. My choices were obvious. I could lie. Lie that I never saw the 800-pound turkey in the freezer. Lie about the better part of the Jolly Green Giant’s annual vegetable production whiling away its days in the laundry room.
Or I could reunite the mystery bags of what I could only hope was in fact frozen food with the dozen bags of cheese by this time living rent-free in my chest freezer.
I went for the latter.
Precious little room existed in my chest freezer, thanks to a certain hunter. But I managed to make it work. Tater tots snuggled with pheasant. Random baggies of ice canoodled with venison. Every corner was occupied.
Over the next six months, Indy and Willie’s Armageddon supply of frozen vegetables would periodically whittle down to a terrifyingly low sum over at their apartment. I would resupply them with the stash in my chest freezer. When deer season rolled around in the fall, I made an emergency transfer to make room for 2019’s venison.
That was a tough year, 2019. For a multitude of reasons. When I got sick January second, it was the Universe stepping in again. I spent days bundled up on my sofa, buzzing through Hotel Beau Sejour on Netflix. I only moved to take Indy to his Parkinson’s boxing class. That was a good week, despite the aches and exhaustion.
Not long after I recovered, I was rooting around my chest freezer for some ground venison, which I enjoy raw from time to time.
That’s a joke. I actually make some really good dinners with that venison. You know, cooked.
While shifting the pheasant and venison cuts I’m not allowed to cook, I found a bag of frozen French fries. I don’t buy them so I know they belonged to Indy and Willie. The Universe again. Telling me I had survived, but 2019 continues to crack my soul like the Grand Canyon cracks the Arizona landscape.
On Fridays, my dad and I take long walks, to help his Parkinson’s. I brought the fries with me that Friday. I tucked them in, cozy with their vegetarian compadres, then allowed Indy to escort me into the hallway to start our walk.
“I want to show you something,” he said. He navigated to the narrow pink border of the hallway carpet. His balance is awful, but he walked that pink strip like his life depended on it, like he was a Wallenda with nothing but space below.
“I’ve been practicing,” he said, and what was left of my heart splintered into dust. Indy, the Marine, my dad who used to balance me on his raised feet as he lay on the floor, who guarded a nuclear site and never told a soul, had been practicing his balance. Because that’s what’s left.
Don says it’s good not to have a heart anymore. I don’t disagree. The only times I cry now are during every episode of Star Trek: Picard and each time I watch Jim & Pam’s wedding on The Office.
I mean, every time.
I watched Indy balance, afraid to speak, afraid the fragments of my heart would erupt from my throat. I wondered how I would make it through that walk when all I wanted was to go back to that week of my sofa and Hotel Beau Sejour.
That was when my dad turned to me. And said the one thing that could make everything all right.
“Hey,” he said, stepping off the pink border, “can you bring me that picture of Hitler? There’s a lady that lives here. I want to show it to her and…”
Well, now that’s another thing I’m glad isn’t in my freezer.