Backwards Days

It’s been a Sunday, such a Sunday, which is wrong because it’s Saturday. It’s not supposed to feel like this. Seven hours of work without enough to do, and when that was over, Molly and I made the thirty-five minute trek to Frankenmuth to see Grandma. But it never feels like thirty-five minutes—it’s at least an hour. It feels more like a short trip around the country. And then the home where Grandma is, reeking of medicine and impatient death. (You know, that old folk smell. I couldn’t stand to breathe it everyday.) And Grandma’s asleep and I feel so guilty waking her up cause she was probably enjoying her escape from the pain… and then she thinks it’s in the morning, but no, Grandma, it’s afternoon, and “Oh,” she says, sounds disappointed. She’s not doing so well. We leave just as Aunt Ethel comes, toting a crowd of small children (grandkids), a surprise exit route we take without hesitation. I don’t say much to Grandma. I don’t know what to say. Driving back I ask Mom questions, what color did Grandma’s hair used to be? Like mine, she says, like yours.

“But yours is blonde and mine is dyed.”

“If it weren’t dyed,” she tells me, “mousy brown.” And it’s true, my brown is very mousy. And while on the way we listened to The Mechanic by The Early November (for old times’ sake), driving home I eventually decide on Californication, the Red Hot Chili Peppers CD that is almost ten years old (Third Eye Blind is almost twelve). And the whole ride back I read the lyrics, feeling complicated by their beauty, strange though it is. The country roads will get me thinking, that on days like this we’re just living to feel. On Saturday/Sundays. Backwards days.

When we arrive home Molly drops me like a hot potato. “Going to the bank,” she says. “I don’t have any money.” But really I think she just wants to keep driving.