The Visible Woman...October 7, 2000

Mom's computer was on the fritz. Locked up. "The arrow won't move."

So I went out to see them. Dad had tools scattered around and was putting up a coat rack and a little miniature of a front porch, just outside the door on the screened porch.

Mom was talking about needing to buy a mattress and springs for the guest room. She also mentioned that she still couldn't find the rubber mat for the bathtub.

"Do you want to go shopping?"

In an instant she has her jacket and is ready. Mom likes to shop. Dad doesn't. He doesn't like her to drive.

We go to a nearby center and go to Bed, Bath and Beyond. We locate a rubber mat for the tub. She also buys a bathroom scale to replace the sad-looking ones they moved here. We look at other things but nothing pleases. I notice that there is a mattress store in the center. We go in there and I encourage her to buy a moderately-priced one and just get it done. Shopping for bedding sounds exceedingly boring. She's willing and she writes a check for it and they agree to deliver it in the afternoon.

On to Michael's. She likes looking around here. She's after some small wooden letters for some of her miniature projects. We look around a bit but only buy those.

I figure this will wear her out but she has another stop in her. On to Container Store. I pick up a couple of packing things and she chooses a coat tree for the bathroom so Dad can hang his pajamas or clothes he wants to wear again. We get her a couple of plastic storage boxes for her projects and find this clever clothes hamper that doubles as a sturdy stool for her walk-in closet.

Home again, we show Dad the coat tree for the bathroom and he hangs his 'sleep shorts' and a pair of trousers on it.

"I'll hang stuff on it, too" she says.

"Just so your clothes don't touch mine," he says.

They are joking, of course. But moving has focused them on getting their material world in order in a way that staying in one place could not. They had to go through it all, pack it up or discard it, move it a few hundred miles, unpack it. Given that much trouble, you might as well try to have it the way you like. Anyway, that's my assessment of where their heads are. Who knows? It's hard to be inside someone else's skull.

When I get home, FFP has made a roast. The kitchen smells good, like cooking meat and rosemary. There is a branch off the rosemary plant on the counter. How homey.

After the UT fiasco is over, FFP wants to spend some quality time. Of course, the way to do this is to go to the bookstore together. A wander around the big Barnes and Noble, discussing books and music.

It's getting cooler and the rain is harder. If anything, this has driven more people to spend Saturday at B&N. Students are camped at the tables, studying and reading borrowed weird music magazines in between. I find an easy chair, empty except for a pile of New Mexico guidebooks. I move them to a table and plop down with a newly published book on writing and a newly published book about a woman traveling alone. Forrest drifts by a few times. Once to show me a new book about the making of Mile Davis' "Kind of Blue" and once to show me a newly published book of letters, memories, sketches and paintings from one guy's World War II. He leaves that with me and I read some of it and admire the nice sketches and paintings.

I finally leave my comfy chair and go to music where I find FFP looking at DVDs. I tell him we should get the WWII book and go put the others back. While downstairs, I wander around the bargain books a bit and decide to buy one for $2.49 by Daniel Hillis, an famous AI guru. Because it looks interesting and it's cheap. Back up in music, I locate FFP. He's looking at CDs, wondering if he has a particular Chet Baker. He's decided we need a DVD of 'Carnal Knowledge.' Otherwise, he's just been browsing.

We buy the books and the DVD in the music department. (A perfect dodge for a busy day in the bookstore. Lines can form downstairs when there are none in the music department. But you can buy anything there.)

I am an American and I have consumed. So we go home, stopping at Russell's coffee shop for a piece of cheese cake (me) and a piece of carrot cake (himself). I almost never have dessert after dinner. So as soon as we get home, I fire up the Capresso and make a cup of coffee and eat it. FFP heats some roast and serves dinner with canned asparagus and beets and a pea soup. I have no trouble eating the dinner after the cheesecake. The other way around, I'd probably be too full. FFP opens a 1993 Yarra Yering Underhill Shiraz and this delicious wine sets off a perfect evening at home. We watch "Carnal Knowledge" and marvel at how young Jack Nicholson is, how wonderful the Mike Nichols direction is, etc. Has Art Garfunkel aged at all? (Or Paul Simon for that matter? But he isn't in this movie.) What's up with that?

Then we put on "La Boheme" (a Sydney opera house production on Laser Disk) and enjoy the music and glances at the sets while reading.

It's weekends like this that make me sorry I have to travel for work. Almost makes me sorry that the traveller inside me makes going somewhere now and then necessary. Home is a great place.