A FUTURE? MAKING THE MOVE

I am a changeling. My mirror, my mind make music together. Minus the Schnoz, I am becoming Jimmy Durante. I dream while I’m awake. ‘Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, yet you wanted to stay?’ He flapped his lazy, crazy fedora and continued, ‘Ha Cha Cha.’ I’m flapping my visor. If he were in a boat, I’d be rowing with him.

 

Life has been good to me. I have been good to it but now a need is clawing at my spine. It’s scratching bejesus out of me . Solitude is elusive. Three teen age children outsmart me in academics, in theories, in simple games. Tim, my husband, works ten hours a day. Our maid cleans. I cook, play Bridge, take quiet walks along the Susquehanna, watch the oarsmen glide down the river.  Our family is close, loving, considerate, one I have to get away from when the mood envelops me so tightly I cry, always alone. The inside of me begs for a place of my own, a creative place where noone yells, ‘Ma, I’m home,’. No phone rings, there are no emails to read and delete. What I need is growing clearer.

 

My wants and actions are two different things. The thirty year haze is clearing away. I want to write ! I’ve tried it many times and end up with trash, rolled up scraps of garbage. High school kids do better than I. My reading Hemingway, Stoker, Dickens, Berry even Patterson, does little to no good. I do not learn technique, structure or expletives (except my own). They are all far above me. My brain goes into melt down...and then a match flickers.

 

Houses, apartments, rooms to rent fill three columns of the Sunday Philadelphian. Rain is battering the front of our house. All the rose petals have flown away. Tim sleeps late and lord knows what the teens are doing. Surely texting, celling, perhaps studying, but I doubt that.
Newspaper print has become too small, too pale. Sunday ads are minuscule. While my vision is 20/25 I still  have to get Tim’s magnifying  glass from his bedroom desk. The three columns become readable. None grab me and my spirits hit the fan. Monday morning’s paper has only one column of rental ads. I don’t need 500. One promising one will due. ‘Room to rent. Unfurnished Single/F. 2nd fl. Pvt. house/facilities, river view available by the month. 411-392-0518 noon to 4.’ I cut it out and scotch tape it to my writing book. The line is busy but I get thru at 1:30. Mrs. Freeman suggests I come right over as others are interested. Bull, I think, but go. The location, fifteen miles away, is great. Elderly Mrs. Freeman keeps a clean house and is most accommodating. The downstairs furniture is dated but makes no difference to me. I will be upstairs a few hours a day whenever I feel like it. She asks if I want meals too and I tell her no and that I won’t be sleeping in the room either. My writing explanation suits her.

 

The very next day I take a folding aluminum table, a usable lamp that was laying around in our basement forever,  a coffee maker and mug over, stop in Office Depot to buy a swivel chair to be delivered the next day. My ipod with the music I love is in my purse. In MY room I open the shade and there is the river, a tiny part of it, but enough for me. My little experiment will remain my secret.

 

In the family  house I gather some toiletries, hand towels, Kleenex, toilet tissue, a bag of pretzels and most important, pens, notebooks, a Thesaurus, paper clips, scotch tape and make my move.

 

The silence surrounds me. I shake with excitement and begin:

 

‘The man was already cold, quite dead. I walk carefully, wait for the ME and..........’