Rural Drop off…

It’s been almost a month since my last drop off. Tooling around rural Pennsylvania for an entire week and then kicking it in Asheville with my younger sister, C, for several days, I would have thought that my languid days of freedom would keep their imprint once I returned back to Los Angeles. However, upon landing my LA life picked me back up into its arms, spinning me around like a whirling dervish. The amazing moments of my trip fell from my present grasp and filled my mind as memory, like distant stars in a summer sky.

I’ve looked at those stars a lot since I’ve been back. I think on my nephew who was born as I was flying back from Asheville. The daily calls to my other sister, M, on pregnant pins and needles for weeks waiting for this kid to come into the world. The plane literally landed, I checked my cell phone and the little guy had arrived.

Three wonderful days with my sister in Asheville, NC where each day had an amazing flow of serendipity and adventure. Touring the Biltmore just as it was closing and having the largest private estate to ourselves. Meeting a charming Southern man who grew up with Sally Mann, one of my sister’s favorite photographers. Accidentally hushing the crowd at our Bed and Breakfast after pondering what it would have been like to have been gay during the Biltmore times. Happening upon Asheville’s antique section and decorating a beautiful bell for my sister to hang in her bedroom based on my hunch of her past lives. And yes, a randomblooms drop-off, deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania.

Given the liquid languor of the country vs. the condensed hectic feel of Los Angeles, I knew that randomblooms needed a slight adjustment. Dropping off in the country demanded a different approach than I’ve done in Los Angeles. I wanted to do a drop off but I wasn’t sure how. It came to me through supporting my father. And to understand that support, we need to jump back a tiny bit.

My father has a brother and a sister both of whom don’t speak to him. And I say that because he would love to speak to them but really they just don’t speak to him. And I think that’s because my Aunt J, who’s in her 70’s, has dementia that comes out as complete rage against my father. The brother not speaking to my Dad isn’t quite as uncomfortable as the sister not speaking to my dad and that’s because Uncle J lives in Manhattan while Aunt J lives up the road from where we were.

Aunt J is a character. Take any film that has eccentric, rural characters in them and you’ll find her. She lives out in the woods, in a cabin she built years ago with her ex husband. A cabin with a double seated outhouse, and for many years, no water or electricity. She used to raise, kill and eat her own rabbits. She almost died from a ruptured esophagus, due to alcohol, has a sloping left eyelid, and a great raspy voice like Kathleen Turner or Sylvia Browne. I’m sure she owns guns. She will never relinquish the cigarettes that gave her that great, raspy voice. And she’s determined to bring my dad down. So lifted, is the veil on this quaint rural village.

And in front of every veil is the mask of something idyllic. Next August marks the 200 year anniversary celebration of this small village. A celebration filled with anticipation and preparation. Preparation in the form of local meetings. My dad was excited to be in town for such a meeting and I was just dropping him off on my way to watch my favorite show, So You Think You Can Dance, when we both spotted Aunt J’s car. Sh**! She was at the meeting. Given the vitriol she has for my dad, we were convinced she would be a no show. And yet, there she was. What to do?, as Jack Kornfield always muses. Well, you go to the meeting so your father doesn’t feel like he’ll be eaten alive by his older sister. Okay here comes the good part.

In going to the meeting, I sat next to the nicest man. Nice isn’t the right word, I instantly liked him. Loved talking to him, loved his energy, spirit, everything. Was so glad to have met him. And what I found out in talking to him was that he had been battling cancer for the past year. I was amazed that this bright, spirit before me was undergoing chemo treatments. Walking into the room with a sun kissed, summer tan and an “I love life” energy, didn’t compute with the stories of chemo he shared. He talked about days in the winter where he would wake up, read the paper for ten minutes and exhausted, go back to sleep until 10pm that night. He talked about his friends; friends he’s known since they were five, who came by every day to visit, or took him out for a drive and how that kept him going. He was inspiring. He was the next drop off.

It was muggy and June, so I planted flowers in a pot rather than delivering cut ones. I did it on my last day there. The night before I got a call from my good friend, K2, who told me her grandmother, nicknamed Who Who, had been in the hospital for 12 days due to a stroke. It wasn’t perfect of course that she’d had a stroke, but in basking in Denny’s stories of friendship and love, it was perfect to have heard from K2 since her family is one that runs on such friendship and love. You lift the veil on that family and all you see is more love.

K2’s mother, a cowgirl and horse lover at heart is incredibly close to her mother, Who Who. One of my favorite stories about K2’s mother is when she noticed that her hen wouldn’t budge from an egg she had laid. Feeling that the hen wanted to hatch a little baby, K2’s mother went out and bought a fertilized egg. Out came Patch and the hen got her chick. The two happily cluck around the backyard, inseparable. That’s the kind of love, creativity and warmth that runs through their family.

The drop off was for Denny and Who Who. My father watched me as I was planting the pots. As they rested in the shade he commented “They’re pretty but no one’s going to be here to water them.” I walked into the house replying “That’s okay, we’re going to give them away.”

Denny gave me his warm smile when he saw the potted flowers. I took his photo and he joked “You gonna show us country bumpkins back home?” I was surprised by his comment but not as surprised as I was to hear that he and his two sons had just started shooting at chipmunks before we arrived. I gave him the flowers and my parting wish “Please don’t kill too many chipmunks!” Who Who’s pot went to a woman down the road, who owns a farm and just lost her 42 year old daughter to a heart attack.

That night, my dad and I shared a bottle of wine over a dinner of fresh talapia and steamed broccoli. Tipsy, maybe drunk for us, we went to the cemetery to check on the flowers we’d planted earlier at his parents’ grave site. It was a beautiful, warm summer night. The morning doves were cooing as the sun dipped behind the hills like a gold medallion. We were intoxicated. Not just from the wine but the entire trip.

I’m back in LA; Who Who has made a full recovery and is back home, Denny is hopefully laying off the chipmunk population and my dad just received a letter from his sister. Apparently, she saw us planting flowers in the cemetery and is convinced that I am headed to Brazil (where my Grandfather lived with his 3rd wife until he died) to exhume my Grandfather’s remains, so that I may take what’s left of his decomposed body from 1989 and bring it back to rural Pennsylvania. My father, very disturbed by the letter, asked my advice.

The ideas in the letter were so absurd I found it funny. Really funny. But the accusations hurt my father. We want people to think the best of us and often they don’t. Others can’t feel our deepest desires. I sometimes look at things in my life and I think “but I feel bigger than that”. To doing things that make your spirit feel bigger and focusing on the friends who will come and visit you every day or go out and get that fertilized egg. Those are the moments that become the stars in our sky of memory.