Miami - Day 2: I am having such a great time!!

So, upon getting picked up by cousins S and P (Cousin S's husband) from the airport (I won't go into the drama involving the loss of my beloved jacket that I've had for years) and getting comfortably settled around the kitchen table, S informs me that her life has basically become so physically painful and lonely (because their 2 beautiful daughters have moved away) and scary (no friends around to help in an emergency), and with no hope of improvement in the future that she has nothing to look forward to in life, but other than that, she's doing great! (This would be the same cousin that wrote the most hysterical email I ever read to all us cousins describing the loss of their hand-built (down to the bunk beds the kids grew up in) house to Hurricane Andrew, and all the red tape they ran into with their insurance, rendering them basically homeless. This poem their daughter wrote about it always makes me cry.)

So, I figure this might not be a good time to discuss our great dreams for the future, so I started asking her about her past. OMG, great stuff! I was never more entertained and I can't repeat any of these stories because, well, let's just say that if this was a gossip blog, it would have been sizzling. I even learned things about our own family that I never knew (my other grandfather was also a tailor). I also learned that the one and only photo she has with one of her famous life-long friends is the one I took of them.

She was raised by communists and atheists, so she was raised on "the outside." She had to work since she was 13. Her first job was one her mother found for her in a whore house (as a switchboard operator, and she had no idea who all the pretty girls were that were her new friends). A famous comedian she was friends with at one time asked her if she could hook him up with any of her girlfriends, and S told him the only single woman she knew was her mother, and he said "that might be ok," turns to S's husband and asks him, "would you fuck her mother?" Then S started telling me stories about P, her husband, while he is sitting right there. We were in gales of laughter and he didn't understand why he was so funny, and the more he didn't see how funny he was the funnier he got. You know those circular situations? These are some of the things that pop out of P's mathematical genius mind (mentioned in the above poem) that were cracking us up so much: P bemoaned the fact that they were just one house away - if they had bought the house next door their address would be a palindrome. Pete moaned, "off by just one house!" adding to the hilarity. Pete's birthday month and year are both squares, but the day was just one day off (24 instead of 25), and again P expressed his dismay at being off by one number, sending S and I into spasms. While we were making fun of him in this manner and laughing hysterically, he was having a voiceover on his laptop say big numbers just so he could hear it say all those "illions."

So, earlier today, around noon, we were discussing what tourist attraction we wanted to go to when Mark Reno drops by to borrow a table saw. P says this would be a great day to stop by and see Janet, would I rather go there than whatever tourist attraction we had been considering? If there's a choice of going to the Renos and anything else, I will pick going to the Renos (I understand S and P's kids feel the same way). Plus, I read Janet's biography and had questions. So, P drove us over there so he could discuss the new door Mark was making for the house their mother built, and I could visit with Janet.

The first thing Mark said when we got there was "this is required reading in this house" (pointing to one of several books lying around about Parkinson's), "but we don't read the ending of it. We don't like the ending." That kind of freaked me out, but everybody laughed, including Janet ("Jannie").

So, P and Mark went off to attend to the door, and I was left to ask Janet about her biography.  I told her that when I got to all the political stuff at the end I got bored and stopped reading (she laughed), but I loved the beginning about her parents and childhood, and I asked her if she felt her biography accurately represented her childhood? She said reading it didn't make her gag (or blanch or some similar word) and I confirmed, "So you thought it was accurate?" She said yes (Mark indicated he had a different opinion, which I will talk to him about later). I told her next lifetime I want to be born a Reno and she laughed, but I couldn't get an answer to my next question, because she was drifting in and out of her Parkinson's haze.

Meanwhile, Mark had set up some crazy thing where he puts you inside a rope loop and hoists you up a tree. Just then his wife came home so he gave her the "test ride." Then he pulled me up the tree in it. That was crazy fun!! And the wild peacocks all came up to the porch in a big bunch! Even Janet said that was really unusual for them all to be out together like that. I asked her if she named them all, and she said only some of them. Cousin P was disappointed that I missed the big one to the left, but I was going for the sheer number of them! I was trying to fit as many of those wild peacocks as I could in the tiny window of my camera, and only got half of them.

I asked Janet my question again later and she just said "the memories make me happy." That answered the biggest question I had. I told her the last time I saw her she just radiated happiness and I wanted to know if she was happy, and she said "I am happy. Thank you." And my eyes began tearing and she handed me her mail she had been looking at. I didn't know what that gesture may have meant. I realized her nurse had gone to the mailbox, Mark and P were outside, and it was just the two of us, sitting on her porch in her beautiful swamp. I said, "wow, this is beautiful." She said, "the sky isn't usually like this, just bla." She meant that she was agreeing that it was beautiful because usually the sun is too bright, but this bla sky was creating a rare and beautiful ambiance. As I sat there we got a sudden Florida shower that rained down on her new tin roof (the old one had been wood shingle). I went outside in the rain and swung myself nauseous on the swing. I didn't know that was even possible.

It was so lovely and peaceful on that porch in the old Reno homestead with no TVs or computers, but with generations of history that will all go when Janet goes, that I completely forgot to remind P to bring home the folding crib he was supposed to (for new granddaughter's impending first visit on Sunday) when I was rushed outta there to go home.