Two days and two nights ago Rita came down from Riverside California and parked her car in a lot stateside. This morning, walking over to Alice’s by way of the on-again-off-again sidewalk between the rows of casitas, then the half block to turn on Durazno and go a bit further to knock at Alice’s speakeasy door, I passed the vintage Harley a neighbor keeps pulled up tight nosing into his bright front door. It is already dark outside as I write this and I can’t remember what color the door is, only its brightness and the Harley.
The Harley is black and everything shines and a woman who wears lipstick could use the polished surface of gas tank or fenders as ebony mirrors. I don’t wear lipstick and, having nothing to check in regard to appearance, continued on to Alice’s house to meet her and Rita for the 8:30 trip to cross the border, returning Rita stateside. But before delivering Rita to the parking lot, we went on to San Diego Community College and took in the CityBookFair and listened to Melinda Palacio, along with three other Latinas, read from the anthology Latinos in Lotusland – they were muy excellente, all three. If the anthology is anything like the selections they offered, I recommend buying the book.
Afterward, we drove to where my red Prius has been visiting “A” Street sharing in the pleasantries of traffic with Carolyn’s white Honda. Carolyn is my old friend from Jurupa Jr. High School; she taught me how to use a combination lock when we were thirteen. We met for the first time in Seventh Grade Assembly where I was dumbfounded by Lefts and Rights and Going Past particular numbers and then Turning Back.
(My apologies. I am sixty-one and three-quarters years old and often ramble off target. Too young to be so but what can I say.)
At the Prius, I unpacked all of my “major Road Trip” belongings – pillows, sleeping bag, printer, breakfast tray, wool sweaters, one red coat and another brown bomber jacket, a sack full of wool scarves and gloves and hats for the brisk New England fall I had figured on driving through and exploring. I unpacked them all from my Prius and with Alice and Rita’s help, packed them all into Alice’s white Ford Explorer to bring them here – to mi casita in Rosarito. Then I hugged Carolyn another Goodbye and told her I would be back next week, I thought, and she said my little red car would be fine and not to worry. So I’m not.
A short drive later we dropped Rita off at her car and headed south again. Before leaving the states, we stopped at Marshall’s where I purchased four brown plates with a coffee-brown line pattern that makes a design that might have once wanted to be Celtic or perhaps something akin to English Cabbage Roses, and – unable to decide what path to follow – became a pleasing abstract. I also bought four small red bowls, bright poppy red, and hardly bigger than rounding coffee cups, a tall ginger jar (I call it a ginger jar because of the lid but it is tall and slim and a singular rust-red and not at all like any rotund and patterned ginger jar I’ve ever seen), two bigger dark olive bowls, three coffee mugs, two red and one for Josh (with scrabble tiles all over it spelling words) for him to drink his coffee from when he visits. I have a case of Dos Equis in the frig for Don. I have a red blender for Curt to make liquados. I have a bubblegum pink skillet, a lime green saucepan, and a larger orange pot for my girls to argue over in my little cocina, a round blue bathmat (now beside my shower), yellow-green towels and turquoise washclothes, white dish towels, sharp knives, and a whisk.
It is dark now, nearly 9:30, and I am tired. Outside my bedroom window the ironwork that is turquoise in the light looks black against the dim-lit sky beyond. Street lights keep the night from being completely dark and I can see three tall date palms against the sky, too, and it comes to me that the design of my life is uncertain just now, that the path I am following is one that opens, color by color, one day at a time.
Yaaaaaay!
10/4/2008 9:30 PM
lynn doiron writes 