Ahh yes, the family.
It's like having dinner together.
Everybody talks at once sometimes,
many listen, some hear, the room is
filled with humor and philosophy,
there are the wise, the ultra-intelligent,
the egotistical, the ignorant, and
the adamantly opinionated,
all passing the peas, most in good humor,
some getting quite pissed off and leaving early,
and not even one lets even
ONE fricking curse word come
out of his or her mouth.
I feel right at home.
That's why I'm here
so often.
Hi Mom! Hi Dad!
Can I borrow the keys
to the car please?
What do you mean no?
Shit! Goddammit!
Alright, have it your way.
I'll be back in a few days
for dinner. Thanks for not
renting out my room.
2.
In the basement,
I have a portfolio full of
poetry and drawings, watercolor
paintings and sketches, three boxes
full of ceramics and sculpture, a
closet full of paintings, piano sheet
music stored in archival folders,
all so old, I don't remember creating
any of them.
They would never throw them away.
Even Dad has his 78's and he went to
the big blue heaven several years ago.
What will we do with all of the stored
and archived history? What will we do with
the family reunion video tapes when
nobody owns a VCR any more because
they stopped making them? What will
we do with the dog-eared journals, some
words highlighted, many with scratched-off
phrases, illegible scribbled notes in the columns,
phone numbers on the backs of the pages
for people who's last names we can't even
remember, people who have married and moved,
divorced, remarried, moved again, and later
joined the circus, perhaps, or became dog trainers
or physicians or dietary advisors or administrative
assistants or who knows what? We don't dial
the numbers any more, they aren't stored in
our cell phones. What will we do with the photo
albums, the piles of photo albums, the family tree
historically rendered by hand with a ball point
pen, some limbs with coffee or wine stains?
Ahh but memories are stored behind the curtain
in the closet in the basement and piled in boxes
underneath the ping pong table and nobody's
even checked the attic and crawl space for
at least a decade.
BUT... on a bright note....
At least we have Advanced Search.
