Reversals

"The reverse side also has a reverse side."

-- the Japanese

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Folks were in for the big weekend. A car's transmission blowing and shifty mechanics in southern Indiana deterred but did not prevent them. I tried to have a whole itinerary planned out, but the long and short of it is that there is little to do in Cincinnati in the line of "touristy" things. Unless you have a big budget.

"We want to do things we can only do in Cincinnati," my dad had told me.

Aside from Skyline's bizarre chili and Graeter's winning ice-cream concoctions, I drew a big blank.

But:

Walked in Eden Park. Hit Skyline and Graeter's. Shopped at Jungle Jim's and a skuzzy flea market under a tanner's sun. Put up curtains in my apartment and reassembled a trunk. Ate Filipino and girlfriend-made food. And did not drink alcohol in any form. Took the dog everywhere.

Also:

Found a few seconds to reconnect with sisters via music. Heart-to-hearted with Mom, also with Dad. Scruffed with Ajax on a hardwood floor. Even had a moment or two to stand on the edge of a hill and contemplate the bend in the Ohio River.

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The nearest Dunkin' Donuts is seven miles south. We'll go there tomorrow. Say goodbyes over crullards and iced coffee.

My car-to-be sits, has sat, in a mechanic's garage in downtown Indianapolis. Untouched. Unfixed. Its transmission has lost its torque, and, like a writer without arms, needs a mindful, skilled, helping hand. Hopefully I can ride over and drive back in the next few days.

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Been getting down on myself lately; don't mean that to sound like an invitation for Hallmark cards. But so. At the end of the day, though, I'm not the guy I saw at Panera today, trying to open a door and sip from a cup of coffee with the only arm he owns. One empty sleeveless shirt sleeve, like an appalled person's mouth, gaping.

Like Vonnegut, instead of writing the damn thing, I'll describe what someone might write.

A futuristic story about a man who awakes after surgery that removed his freakish but useful third arm. He still feels this third arm, which he had worked to a considerable size and toned to perfection: a Christmas goose for a bicep, a lean turkey leg for a forearm. It is now a nub, a freakish and useless sort of boob between his pecs, a nipple between nips. It hangs and sags like an old ugly dress in a thrift store. The healing wound is like Cyclops' eye in the center of his chest. And this man stares at the ceiling and contemplates suicide, because what is life with only two arms?

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Five sirens along this street in two nights. One right now, haunting the night with its urgent mating call, an emergency vehicle desperately searching for an emergency to...well, emerge. A midnight loon, howling at the moon. The official soundtrack of Cincinnati, and a favorite track in cities everywhere.

Rounded this night out with a good game of Bolshevik, which is the PG-13 version of Bullshit. The card game. Then we played something that required us to clap at kings and flap at aces.

--

Cincinnati is not Omaha; Kentucky is not Nebraska. Thirteen hours of driving separates, a space so huge it deafens you, bludgeons you with size. And yet, girlfriend met mom, father saw apartment. Connections--kk, kk, kk, ka-boom!--like synapses snapping to logical order, the rank and file of sense and manner. Chess as life.

And I am not quite a son any more. You don't shed family like jobs or sheets. You wear them always in your travels, easy for reference, ripe for assistance. Yet you neglect them, taking them for granted, like a sticker on your jacket. Time rains on the sticker, unsticking it, peeling it, softening it. The process is as sure as it is sad. The sticker crumbles but the adhesive remains, evidence of something that faded and ruined. The only solution is to dry yourself off and restick the sticker, using that old adhesive as a better base, a truer tack. Otherwise, all the nametag says is, "HELLO, MY NAME IS," and the blank is the distance between your selves. The silence that deafens you.

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MEMORIAL: noun, adjective

–noun

1.	something designed to preserve the memory of a person, event, etc., as a monument or a holiday.

2.	a written statement of facts presented to a sovereign, a legislative body, etc., as the ground of, or expressed in the form of, a petition or remonstrance.

–adjective

3.	preserving the memory of a person or thing; commemorative: memorial services.

4.	of or pertaining to the memory.