:: untitled ::

Monday, July 26, 2004

I place the belt and white dress shirt on the counter for checkout with a shame I've felt many times before. I hate the homogeneity of this place, how everything is juuuust stylish enough for evenings out but still innocuous enough for the workplace. Clothes for the unimaginative urbanite. The gentleman's C of modern fashion. The #1 safety school for business casual applicants. My first boss remarked once that looking around our office was like browsing the pages of a Banana Republic catalog, and I hate proving her right. I can get a belt and shirt almost anywhere, probably of better quality, certainly for less money, but today I'm just too exhausted.

The employee at the cash register is quite the talker. He begins our conversation with a fairly absurd question.

"Say sir, do you watch 'television'?" This is the way he says it, with air-quotes around "television", as if uncertain how to pronounce it. I am nonplussed, wondering if it's a trick question.

"I... Well, about as much as the next man I guess, why?"

"Ever see the commercial for phones where there's a guy with signal bars over his head, and they start to fade, and he asks the woman with plenty of bars above her head if he can use her phone?"

I shake my head negative.

"Oh, well he's wearing your shirt."

The reason he knows this is because the shirt I am wearing, in addition to the shirt I am standing in line to purchase, is one of theirs. And not just from the same chain, but from this location, because despite having probably fifty different locations in Manhattan alone, the last time I had the ignominious pleasure of giving them money was in this very store, one register to the left of where he's now rubbing my face in the fact that his company has monopolized my entire wardrobe as a result of laziness or apathy on my part. As he punctuates his observation with an obsequious smile, my humiliation is complete.

Normally, I might have found this amusing, in a self-schadenfreude kind of way, but not today. I nod, defeated.

"I'll keep an eye out for it," I say, trying to end the exchange. He has other plans.

"So did you buy this belt because it's reversible or-"

"Look, I bought it because I have to go to a funeral and I just need to get a new shirt and belt for the services. I honestly don't care if it's reversible." The instant I say this, I know it's a mistake. He apologizes and very deferentially goes about the remainder of his check-out routine, delicately wrapping both items and announcing the total in a quiet voice. It's larger than I expected. Signing the credit card receipt I note the belt I'd chosen in my haste is exceedingly expensive, explaining his inquisitiveness. I deeply regret unloading on him, infecting him with my emotional burden.

As I turn to leave he tells me to feel better. I don't. I feel much worse than when I entered.

I grew up for the most part with one brother in drought-plagued southern California. Every summer we'd fly with my mother back to her home state of New Jersey, where her entire family still resided. My grandfather outlived his first wife, with whom he'd fathered several children, married my grandmother, who herself came from a large family, and raised three more daughters, leaving a complex and vast network of relatives cris-crossing the entire Garden State. Each visit I'd be introduced to half-uncles and second cousins I'd never heard of before and haven't seen since. The core group of relatives - the ones we primarily went to see during these month-long annual trips - remained steady. My grandmother, a widow since my grandfather's death in the 1950's, welcomed us into her cozy single-bedroom apartment and ensured that our bellies were stocked full of black cherry jello and french toast. A few blocks down the road, my mother's younger sister lived with her husband and their two children while in the neighboring township my mother's older sister had taken over the house in which the three of them were raised, also with her husband and two children.

To a kid bored to tears by the summer doldrums, these vacations were supernovas of social entertainment, complete with an alien landscape. The houses, ancient and made of brick, were the sites of huge dinners stretching on late into the night, fireflies - a serious novelty - still dotting the humid air. "Bedtime" seemed not to apply there. The six cousins played wiffle-ball and Marco Polo, and no matter how often I ran over the grass to second base (the white light post next to the swing set), I never could comprehend how it got so green. We would pile into my uncle's car for trips to get milkshakes, and run upstairs upon returning to play cards or Nintendo. If that weren't all-American enough, a few years we timed our stay to coincide with July 4th, resulting in awed fireworks viewings and day-long backyard barbeques.

I never wanted to leave. Each time we touched back down in LA, and the pilot would reverse the thrust of the engines to facilitate braking, I'd imagine he was throttling up to immediately take off again. I pretended he'd come on the intercom and announce that, due to some bizarre equipment malfunction, we'd have to turn around and head back (this, I later learned, is not the typical reaction people have after having left New Jersey). I always noted that, tailwind aside, the flights there went by more quickly than the flights back.

As much as I and my brother enjoyed those trips though, I know now they were far more important to my mother. Living in self-imposed ostracism, three thousand miles away from her entire family and home, the hours spent catching up in person were irreplaceable. She'd say how she always imagine her and her two sisters growing into old ninnies together, gossiping and sharing in each other's insufferable company.

My mother passes the phone to my father, who asks me where I am. I reply that I'm in Washington DC for the weekend, at a pal's house, grilling outdoors and watching a group of guys play Texas hold-em. I tell him I've had a great time, strolling around the monuments at night and visiting with good friends, that the weather's been fantastic and the food even better. He tells me to speak up, as he almost always does.

I am now more than ever conscious of my parents' growing older, and I want direly to respond that mom didn't have any trouble understanding me and that he needs to get his hearing checked, that I know he's been having a little trouble for a while now, because mom's told me so even though he's too reticent to share it with my brother and myself, that it's been a problem ever since he slipped on a patch of ice and hit his head outside a hospital visiting my mother who was undergoing treatment battling cancer, a battle which she won and which her older sister, she has just informed me, lost tonight.

The family hid it from my grandmother. She'd already lost a husband, sister, and brother to cancer, not to mention the rest of her siblings and even some step children to various other causes. No use scaring her by saying she might lose a daughter as well. A good intention to be sure, and maybe a good strategy if the danger had passed, but it did not, and she stayed in the dark until now. I want to say something about this too.

Instead I clear my throat and speak louder. I repeat only that I'm in DC for the weekend, and omit everything else.

We engage in varying levels of symbiosis with those around us, emotionally, professionally, monetarily, in other ways as well - there's a quid pro quo in place for every relationship in our lives ranging from tacit to explicit, from vague to unambiguous. They are rarely equitable, at least objectively. I could fill pages listing what I got from my Aunt, but I'm not quite sure what I gave back to her. The dynamic between extended relatives is complicated, and usually tilted in the younger's favor, but every time she cooked dinner all I could do was help with the dishes. Whenever a gift arrived with my name on it, a compliment was paid, or some advice drifted my way all I could reciprocate with was a thank you. It seems almost parasitic.

I hope she knew how much those trips meant to me, how much that environment which she was an integral part of creating shaped me, how vivid and lasting the memories of it are.

I think now of another experience buying clothes, at the time not much more satisfying than my episode today with the belt, shirt, and gregarious clerk. There's only one decent suit in my closet, purchased for weddings and future job interviews. I'd originally intended the color to be charcoal gray, but put off going to buy it until the only color available for the style I wanted was black. I needed it immediately - one of the cousins who I remember as being particularly good at wiffle-ball was getting hitched, and I couldn't afford to wait. The only consolation I could conjure, half in jest, was that black would work better for funerals. I no longer find that to be much consolation.

Posted by morland @ 12:14 AM

:: Comments ::

"I could fill pages listing what I got from my aunt..."
here's a small dose of what i've received from morland.
insight, good advice (technical and personal), smiles even when in front of computer, amazing perspective on issues i wouldn't otherwise even think about, stories, laughs, a friend. let me know if i can ever give you anything.

Posted by: graham on July 26, 2004 06:02 PM

Shucks, graham, thanks. I could use a glass of water. Oh, and a magazine to read in the meantime. And if you could empty the dishwasher while you're up that'd be great. Thanks.

Oh.. no, I meant a large glass of water. And can you check to see if my laundry's done? Great - you're a pal.

Posted by: morland on July 26, 2004 07:49 PM

i'm done, fucker.

Posted by: your laundry on July 26, 2004 09:38 PM

Thanks for sharing your Aunt's story with us. Touching stuff. Took the snark right out of me.

Posted by: Nate on July 30, 2004 10:24 AM

'the last time I had the ignominious pleasure of giving them money was in this very store'

its a shame theres not a goodwill on every corner in nyc. hell, everyone could be dressed up for a funeral, even if there werent any to go to.

Posted by: X @ on July 31, 2004 03:42 AM

You mustn't fret that you were a parasite to your Aunt. Older relatives seem only to care that they're remembered, acknowledged, and that they have helped out in some way. I've never seen a relative, thinking about a niece or grandson, and wondering "Gee, I hope he gets me that box set!"

It just gets handed down the line. Your duties are to the little grubs that you and your generation produce. And when the Federal Marshalls finally take you down outside Barstow, your younger relatives will wonder just as you are now.

Give your mom our love, pally. Hope you feel better soon.

Posted by: Scott Ganz on August 2, 2004 01:41 PM

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