So tired, so free!

Reading: Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose. It's amazing

Moving: walked 3 miles

Watching: whatever I can. I am not leaving my basement until it cools down.

Listening: not much, but for some reason I have Tommy Shaw's or Styx's "Too Much Time on My Hands" in my head. I am determinedly humming Elvis Costello to combat this.

7 July 2001: All gone

I finished the damn Golden Notebook. One day, I shall understand it; not yet.

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Bob told me this week that she's leaving Dot Org, Denver, and Colorado. This makes me sad. As Tex said today, "I didn't know you were so close," and I explained, "We're not. We like each other a whole lot but have never hung out." I told him because I remembered my line and wanted to tell someone.

Bob and I talked about why she's leaving, what she'll do, where she's moving, etc. Then I realized something. "Actually I'm glad you're leaving! Yes! I am! Because now my laugh will reign supreme!" She cracked up with that laugh of hers, so I responded with mine, which has only recently but still rarely been unleashed at the office.

And I realized something else: that although CoolBoss is out this week, still my cube is closest to her office. This bolsters Tex's theory that anyone leaving DOt Org announces this to CoolBoss before almost anyone else.

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Yesterday as I walked out to lunch, just outside my building a woman stopped me to ask how to get to Larimer Square. Directing her, I walked a little way with her and she asked if I was in school. I haven't got that for a while and was glad, but because I'm 33 or because I'm an academic manquée? Gesturing with the notebook (which is why she asked) in my hand, I said no, that I work for a research firm thataway but wanted to write some on my lunch hour. She and her husband were in Denver from Los Angeles, he on business and she to tour. This is the sort of random meeting that makes me wonder how many of our acquaintances would have to be laid end to end before any of them overlapped. Hm, I didn't intend that obscenely.

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I thought that the uncle didn't read many novels, but last night over dinner he said he loved Dickens so I asked which was his favorite. "The one about the kid," RDC answered, and I spurted water out my nose.

Also we talked about Hemingway, and of course RDC loves all three major novels and I didn't like A Farewell to Arms at all but loved For Whom the Bell Tolls and RDC's favorite book in the whole wide world, I think, is The Sun Also Rises (it's at least in the top five), which therefore I want to read again.

If I had better retention I maybe wouldn't have to. I read Watership Down to RDC once, seven or eight years ago, and he immediately made use of key lines like "Ees finish Meester Voundvort, yah?" However, last week in the Botanic Garden when the uncle mentioned liking to cross rivers, RDC didn't understand why I called him Fiver (although of course he recognized the name).

Today just before the ant and termite (I assume anyone who pronounces "aunt" with a short "a" calls the male counterpart the termite) left, the mail came with a new edition of the Common Reader catalog. Earlier in the week the uncle'd mentioned The Long Walk, which reminded me that the Common Reader has other historical adventures in it he might like, like No Picnic on Mt. Kenya and We Die Alone. And I can't believe RDC hasn't given him A River Runs Through It or Young Men and Fire yet. That'll make Christmas a no-brainer for him this year.

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[The following bit is about my mother; want to skip it?]

I was thinking--this is from the paper journal, and hey, isn't that like The Golden Notebook?--about my mother and talking. It's interesting, this talking she has said she wants to do. Often on the phone when something remotely sensitive comes up, she says we should talk about it the next time I'm home, sitting next to each other on the couch and holding hands. (There's a realistic image.) Besides that I'm more comfortable with the written word and don't want to waste my time in my town in a mothball-reeking house, there are other reasons we don't talk. If she really wanted to, she could do so on the phone. I'm willing to talk about anything on the phone, though admittedly it's easier to talk about crying stuff in person than on the phone. Saying it should be in person rather than on the phone or in letters is one means to put me off. But primarily, she actually doesn't want to talk. Writing, I realized that when I have been home, she doesn't take advantage of our physical proximity.

The first time I returned to Connecticut was August 1996. We had been in Denver just about a year and I had come back for Nisou's wedding and, coincidentally, my ten-year high school reunion. The first Saturday was the reunion. Late that night, I was trying to put myself to sleep on the living room couch (each bedroom being then occupied by a grandparent and the sleeper-couch in the den not yet extant), drowsily paying not too much attention to The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love and watching "Dr. Zhivago" on TCM. My mother came home from whatever mixer-fixer-upper thing she had attended and wanted to watch something she'd seen previewed for the 11 o'clock local news about a new dance craze. I've all but memorized "Dr. Zhivago," so that was fine, and we learned about the Macarena--my mother got up to follow along with the steps and I thought of the dance cards explaining the Time Warp--and tuned back to TCM. Perhaps I mentioned the reunion--"By the way, an important personal event happened today"--or perhaps she remembered to inquire about it, but anyway I was in the middle of a sentence when she leaned into my lap to take the remote and raise the volume to her usual "my hearing is perfect" shrieking level.

• I had the television on to drowse off to, not particularly to watch, and it was sleepily low but thoroughly audible
• I had just had my high school reunion, which might be significant
• She has seen "Dr. Zhivago" several times, just as I have
• But despite my being home, present, and willing to talk--about us, not just about the reunion, as was, I believe, evident--she would have rathered to watch television than to talk with me.

The following Sunday, she came to fetch me from Charenton, did not want even to greet the people who had hosted her daughter's wedding the year before or to congratulate the (same) people whose own daughter had married the day before, and we spent the day in Old Lyme together, with some time at the lake, before she drove me to the airport.

I went home twice in 1997, first because Granny was doing poorly (that's what my mother told me) but really (this is what really mattered) to meet BDL and second for the wedding. Because BDL was there, no talking happened that earlier, nonwedding weekend--when a man is around he is always the only other human alive, a pattern I remember well from my childhood.

In 1998 I went home for week. It was RDC's first trip home in three years, and when I saw my mother, we were each with our men and no talking happened; the same in 2000.

In 1999 when CLH and I went home for our grandfather's funeral, CLH collapsed soon after we entered the house (and why did I expect different for this most recent trip?) and I sat at the dining table with BDL and my mother, who were eating. They looked around my head at the television behind me, both of them obviously preferring its company to that of someone at least one of them should have cared to speak with after not seeing her for a year, both of them preferring to watch television while eating dinner rather than talk even to each other. They even watched commercials.

Writing about what happened last week, I saw a pattern: both of us allegedly desire to communicate with the other but that seldom happens. Why? I haven't wanted to waste--a telling choice of words--my time near water with her instead of in it. But when I am trapped, as it were, in her domicile, and at her mercy, still she puts me off; and the one time she visited me, she was equally unwilling; and when I initiate conversation, she evades it.

I know damn well that I resent her and that she annoys me, two major reasons of the many that interfere with effective communication. Both my sister and I have tried, individually (together would intimidate the sense out of her; it wouldn't take much and we are formidable), repeatedly, to engage our mother. Historically, it hasn't worked. I am not ready to give up on her. I just go back and forth between Unswayable Final Convictions That I Will Never Beat My Head Against a Wall Again and the rare Well Here's an Opportunity.

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RDC is watching "Jurassic Park" in a well-deserved bit of post-houseguest boat-playing. There's a bit when Sam Neill tries to imitate the call of one of the dinosaurs. "It's not a leopard," RDC protested. I love a man who can make a "Bringing Up Baby" joke without provocation. He also called me on his way home from the airport to play me "Solsbury Hill," which was on the radio. Currently I have Blake with me because he freaked out when the spitting dinosaur fanned her neck at Warren Knight and fluttered away in horror when the T. Rex burst from the jungle.

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The aunt put all their linens in the wash before they left. I was embarrassed and felt not a good hostess by her doing that, but I always strip my bed myself after being a houseguest. Anyway, I finally used the clothesline for bedlinens. I turned back at the door to look at the line, flapping colored and white, and grinned, absurdly happy. I am breaking the rules of Boat by sitting at my desk instead of on the couch, but at least we're all in the cool of the den (my study opens to the den in a wide arch), an excellent place to be when it's 95 out. At 5:00 I went upstairs to make Blake's supper, and I noticed that the cloud cover had brought the temperature down to 80. Opening windows and doors, I wasn't sure it was raining, because every drop evaporated from the patio a moment after impact. I nipped out to remove the two layers of sheets and thick towels, completely dry after four hours. Real laundry! It smelled so good. I love my clothesline.