View southwest from Camp Looking west from the work site, El Refugio The house frame going up View from site House site, before photo It is Tuesday, day two of the construction. We ended early today. Pad is down, house frame is up, plywood roof is on. Chicken wire, roof shingle paper, and first coat … Continue reading Tijuana 2025
by Ray Wisdom
I had called the Shrine the day before to make sure there wouldn't be an issue with my visiting. The person I spoke with was lovely and gave me very detailed directions on how to get to the memory care facility.
As I was driving around the main building, I had this lightning bolt-type remembrance of visiting the exact same place when my grandpa was there. It was eerie. I rationally knew it wa =s the same place, but I guess that memory was buried pretty deep. The last time I saw him, he didn't remember who I was. He thought my mom was his wife. It was all so sad. I guess I had repressed it.
After I was buzzed into the building, the woman at the front desk said that your dad was in B1, and as I turned to go down the hallway, your mom had just entered at the other end. When she saw me, she stopped-short, like she had seen a ghost. She recognized me immediately and was so happy. She said 'Ray, is that you? What are you doing here?' The best way I can describe her reaction was that she was both dumbfounded, with a look of both disbelief and happiness on her face. She was getting ready to leave, but offered to take me back to see your dad.
We went into the room and your dad was watching CNBC (or one of those channels. It was the one with the guy who rolls up his sleeves and gives financial advice. Jim Cramer?) on the TV. Your mom went to his side and said 'Brian, you have a visitor'. Your dad looked at me and I said 'Carpe Diem, Mr. Randall. It's Ray.' He looked at me and said 'Ray'.
Your mom then asked if he had just said something and I told her that he said my name. It was then that she told me about his recent issues with swallowing and speaking and how she had to call for hospice care. That he had only started verbally communicating again that day. He looked at your mom and said 'who called hospice?' She said she had. He then continued to watch TV.
Your mom stayed for about 10 more minutes and we chatted. She relayed how hard it has been for her. How she visits most days. She started crying as she told me this and then reiterated how happy she was that I was visiting. She said I could pop by the house any time I wanted. If she wasn't there, she was probably visiting your dad. I told her that I had started writing a letter to her, but I couldn't find the words. We had a long hug and I told her that I was happy to have run into her. I let her know that she could leave and I would stay with your dad for a while.
After your mom left, I pulled up a chair and sat next to your dad. He was watching TV and would occasionally look over at me. There wasn't much that would lead me to think he recognized me. I asked if he still followed the market and he said 'everyday'. I asked if he still followed any other news but he didn't respond...
The other thing that my dad said that surprised me because of the cognizance it showed was his identifying an old towel I had grabbed from out of the car in order to wipe down the chair I wanted to sit in.
"Looks like one of our old towels," he said.
It took me a moment to process what he had said but he was correct. It's an old Ralph Lauren beige hand towel from what is now his old house, Rockingham. The towel is about a third of the size of a bath owl, much larger than a square washcloth. Something like a foot by two feet.
That towel must be thirty years old, which is part of why I like them so much. They're useful. Wiping, drying, cleaning up, covering up. They can serve as your only towel if you happen to— Sneeeeeze!!! My dad rips off one of his patented loud sneezes and the pen jolts in my hand, skittering across the page. My dad is still one of the loudest sneezers around.
"Have any memorable meals lately?" I ask him.
"Fish with tartar sauce, two tartars," he tells me.
"Last night?"
"That could have been."
He's sharper today, no doubt. Down the road I could see myself working here. I'd volunteer or maybe take a part-time job. If they wanted another groundskeeper on staff who would also work as a porter, transporting Dammert residents to lunch and back. I'd fill in this pock-marked concrete. Do some hedge trimming. Sweeping...
The horses were talking in the paddock
one was nickering, one was answering
One more run, one last race
the horse with a green cap
and a white blaze down his nose
fitted for blinkers
Nine races down, one left at Saratoga
The dirt, the gate
the first mile, the far turn
the stretch, the wire
The test in the morning
the morning in the notebook
the handlers smoking quietly in the barn
It started early in the morning,
when the whip-poor-wills
whistled for love and
strawberries shed their tiny hairs.
It was the time of year when
mud daubers went in search of
soft dirt and cucumbers unfurled
their curious vines.
Frogs sprang with song from the creek
and cows looked past fence lines for
any sign of their kidnapped calves.
The bull was ripping
grass from dewy ground while trees
sorted wind with their leaves
and the skin of a red onion
floated like a petal to the patio.
Wherever possible, weeds filled cracks
with stubborn roots and buntings spiced
sunlight with their riddles.
A jet thronged with speed in the heavens and
a phoebe sung its name like a jingle while
farmers began rounds in unlicensed trucks.
News trickled like a leak from the speaker
while a skunk settled into its hole behind the house
and kitschy windmills erupted with each gust.
As fresh clouds unrolled their thick gray tarp
a cowbird squeaked like quartz in a vise
and Mr Coffee gurgled like a gremlin.
A hawk screamed its mind from the sky
and a column of ants swarmed a beatle like photons.
The forecast called for a storm or two and the
mousetrap offered cheese with a catch.
Ticks waited for flesh to pass through the brush
and vultures sat like statues on the dormers
while lizards crawled like children over rocks.
Tall grass blushed at the stroke of an unseen hand
and the cardinal sang, “It’s weird, it’s weird, it’s weird.”
As rain began to fall on the fields, grasshoppers hushed
their summer ceremony and a fly skittered across this page.
The cuckoo knocked its dull chime from a hidden branch
and yarrow held tight in clusters of white and yellow
while a spider sped between drops on its octagon of legs.
Mullein welcomed the rain into its fat rosette
of velvety leaves and thunder arrived like
something heavy falling down a hillside.
Raindrops hit the windows, washing them of their dust
and lightning lit up the darkened land like an x-ray
as the ghosts of prospects past
plumbed the valley for veins of sunken zinc.
I have a new prose poem/essay about birding at Farm posted at the Advanced Leisure site.
It's called "Hunt and Peck" and you can read it by following this link:
https://www.advancedleisure.com/lifestyleanddesignarticles/hunt-peck
The star that exploded was way too dim. I became nothing but gravity but then I knew my soul.
Archery season for deer opens today, halfway through September, freight rail facing a union strike. You gotta get them data together, gotta get them in the same room, negotiate with them, get them on the same page. This data, that data, get them to shake hands.
I left my flip flops somewhere out there, walking around barefoot, grounding. Shards of acorn shells hurt when stuck to my soles but when clean my feet could grip better against the rock face compared to when their were sheathed in flippers.
In a shower with unheated well water. The body adjusts but the portion against which the water feels most cold is the middle of my back, along the spine, so many switches in there, skin the most naked. Need: white paint, pink paint, Naples yellow. Such a solid state of matter, ailing hospital, corrupt politician needs no rehab. You're fine, said the doctor. Get back down to the waterfront and cast that vote.
It's nice to have a little extra light. Cattle swindle, waterfront development. Notes gone the wrong way, jobs buried in the Meadowlands. A cigarette walks into a farmhouse. The metal is loose on the barn. Your teeth are decent tweezers, and other facts you might as well know while you're still human.
Farm Cat reappears. Where time is irrelevant. She's a jumper, bounces around between worlds...
White-faced cow's got red in it somewhere. Breed two white-faced cows, that's how you get a red one. Some people think Angus meat marbles better, I don't know. Older people said Jerseys or Guernseys were better. To me, you take the skin off the cow, nobody would be able to tell the difference.
There's salt in the feed. They cut it with that or else they'd eat it all at once. It's a protein feed, 20% protein, from the MFA. There's one in Meta, one in Vienna.
Cows can live as long as twenty years. This one here's twelve years old, you can see her belly's getting pretty big. The older cows they call short and solid. Because their teeth get short and square. If a cow has a broken tooth, they call them broken-mouthed cows, and if they have a broken tooth, they're probably old cows. They break a tooth on a rock, eating dirt. When the grass is eaten down to the ground. We keep our grass pretty tall so that won't happen...
We go to lunch. Bob's at the lunch table.
"I look around at these two guys," he says, "And I wonder, 'Are they ever gonna be included in something as big as this?'"
The food arrives and Bob looks my way.
"I don't really want this," he says, and starts laughing.
I take this opportunity to ask him about his tattoo. Was it from his military days? He doesn't answer the question. It's the only time he's ever seemed to evade a question, or appearing to do so. He starts talking about his son fixing up houses. "They were small hands but many," he says. Then, "That's one thing I like about this place. It's clean."
I listen to lunch room sounds. One of the CNAs is encouraging one of three Helens (in this case, the mayor's daughter) to eat her food. Helen replies in her soft-spoken manner, "I'd better not. I don't want to throw up here. Everyone will look at me." The only thing she eats is the ice cream.
Then, a commotion from out in the hall, a racket.
"What the...?!" Bob exclaims. "It sounded like about two or three horses or something." Then he sneezes. "Oooh, that one came out fast," he says.
Bob ate the garlic bread, a little bit of pasta, and the ice cream. "Ice cream's ice cream," he says. "But this is pretty good."
I went over to the main dining room and got a plate of my own. Pizza spaghetti they call it. I ate everything on the plate save one pepperoni. My dad ate everything except one slice of zucchini. It's the Patsy Cline CD playing today. Bob knows these lyrics, some of them. He sings along. When the last song on the CD stops playing he says, "So there."
Genevieve, the 98-year-old woman hunched over in her usual windbreaker outfit makes her way out by taking tiny steps with her dangling wheelchair feet, quiet as a cloud except when she catches one of the CNAs on her way out and asks for a Honey Nut Cheerios to go.
"We enjoyed lunch with you, Bob," my dad tells his lunch mate.
"When was that?" asks Bob.
"Today," says dad.
"Oh, ha. Ha ha. Thank you, thank you very much," says Bob.
But we don't get going just yet. It's quiet now in the lunch room. The sound of wind chimes comes from outside, past the glass. My dad is starting to doze off. Bob is picking at his teeth, wiping clean the glasses he lost for a few days last week.
"I think I'm gonna go downstairs," Bob says. "I don't know if I've been down there. I thought I had. I'll probably make a new, or I don't know. As far as I knew, we hadn't used that, or we wished it away. I'm goin' downstairs. Anybody left? Hello, hello. I'm goin' down..."
Admirals Club. Dad going through a USA Today. Cup of coffee going lukewarm in front of me. I just sped through a sudoku and it didn't blow up. The chair I'm in is leather, comfortable. Thoughts of the dog are stressing me; have been since before I left the house. I'll feel much better when my wife returns to the house tonight, back from a trip of her own; lets me know everything is alright. Also, rain today. Gray day, Gray Davis. Remember him? Total recall. The e-mail that never was. Unknown sender, no subject, blank body, unsigned. A friend is to let the dog out mid-day but problems with the front-door-knob plague me like a vice. Is the roof keeping out the rain? I rain onto paper, letting everything out. Grip on my temples easing. Hoping there aren't any leaks; nothing I can do about them now. American Airlines, AMR. Flying in the rain. My father went to use the computer. When he's back he'll tell me if the market's up or down.
JBR.com 