It takes a Village and Xanax: Tacoma Tales, Part 1

Things I remember about Tacoma, and its people: 1) it’s not Seattle; 2) I had to fly on a plane to get to it; 3) they fully believe in a Farmer’s Market – despite the fact that, in my estimation, there were probably only two or three actual farmers at the market; 4) they want everywhere you turn to be something worth looking at; 5) so, that means there’s a lot of random art and sculptures everywhere; 6) Sundays are just as dead there as here, and 7) did I mention I had to fly on a plane to get there?

This wall is not in Tacoma.

Well, it’s true. So, I’m sure I mentioned it. Probably, like, twice, at the least.

This is how I got on a plane. I woke up very early and took several Xanax. (I may have also sipped a little of a wee bev, to help with the Swallowing. I have never enjoyed swallowing pills, in any form, be it via apple juice, ice cream, or a tablespoon of peanut butter).

I’m using the term several, in relation to the Xanax, to preserve my reputation.  I’m not addicted; it is simply rebuttal to my fear of flying. I’d like to think it helped; I’m sure Thomas and Amanda can attest more accurately to that…but, as far as the nature of what a Xanax is supposed to do, that part didn’t kick in until ten minutes from touchdown, at Sea-Tac, which I discovered is not a large push-pin that keeps the western middle portion of Washington state attached to the ocean floor, it’s actually a real place.

It also sits fifty dollars’ worth away from Tacoma. It is not, in my opinion, worth that much.

After landing – the second most frightening part of flying and sometimes the first – though, is when the real fun began. I was to remain in a hazy daze of “All’s well that ends well” for at least the following 35-40 hours. On several occasions, I found myself, alone, riding the Link from the hotel to the theatre district, intent on taking it all the way around the city, despite the fact that I was told, three times, by different conductors that it didn’t do that.

I don’t remember, for instance, how I got to the Chihuly Glass Bridge. Thank god, it wasn’t what I was expecting. That would have simply given me a heart attack. But, it also would have been a good picture.

There isn’t much to do in Tacoma, except stare. And eat. Both of which are things I do quite well. But I do them often enough here at home.

Yet, I enjoyed, no…no, I appreciated the aesthetic attempt Tacoma seems to encourage. It’s a city that really loves itself. And that makes walking a pleasure. We did a lot of walking, and detour-ing; the city suffers from the same illness ours does: random, prolonged, unexpected roadway renovation. There’s no cure for this; the blister just has to boil, come to a head, all on its own.

Like this, but noisier and with a cigarette.

The real joy was in trying to find a way from the right side of the street to the left side, where the Pantages Theater sat. This is where all the performances were occurring. Luckily, there was an unhappy city employee with her orange hat and vest and Virginia Slim, tucked ever so Bankheadishly beneath her upper gum, to pointedly gesture to the miniscule sign that indicated how we were to cross the road.

I think I’ll miss her, most of all.

By the time the daze lifted, our theatre had been nominated for six national awards and had won three of them. We were in a small theatre being bombarded by a group of local singers doing quite a determined job of entertaining us with a medley, a 14-minute long medley, of various and sundry Broadway tunes.

I’m not sure, but I think the woman in the shimmery blue-green sequined gown, the one who did what I’m sure she’d call singing on her rendition of “Razzle Dazzle,” was the Helpful Crossing Guard. I had no Virginia Slim on me to verify.

But, that’s not the point. In my memory of this trip, it was the Helpful Crossing Guard. Because in my memory of this trip, and it was a wonderful trip, I like thinking of her on stage. That’s what community theatre is all about. She has just as much right to strut the boards as any of us do. And thinking that, at least while I sat in that theatre under musical attack, is what made me enjoy it. I even teared up. I did.

Of course, aside from a fateful dinner cruise (I’ll come back to that later, I assure you), and a few nights of karaoke, rolling on the floor with a stranger in an interpretive dance, coupled with the deaths of Wacko and the Farrah Fawcett, nothing could prevent the fact that a plane waited to take me back home to Mississippi.

There's a joke in here somewhere, I promise.

I’ve decided it’s the size of the plane that affects me. I’ve also decided that the next time I fly on a prop plane will have to be when I’m dead and for some reason my family has requested that my dead body be flown around my hometown for “one last goodbye.”

I don’t even know why on earth prop planes still exist.

But, that’s what brought me home, and as we landed in the pasture that it is the GTR Airport, what should greet me upon arrival but a good, old-fashioned thunderstorm. The turbulence, in my book, was devastating. The man sitting in front of me didn’t get the hint and close his window. Amanda finally asked him to, and he did. He wasn’t from America, so I halfway forgive him.

The nerves didn’t upset me until I was finally in my own bed.  But, I think I know now what this lethal combo of aviophobia is made of: the small cabins, the lack of legroom, the inability to control my immediate environment, and the fact that I’m 30,000 feet off the ground…this is the sum of why I hate to fly.

That’s a lot, isn’t it?

No wonder Xanax only did a fourth of the trick.

Thankfully, though, on the long flights, at least – they served a cheese tray.

I called her Margaret Alice and her awkward daughter Michelle.

Sometimes, I dog sit.  It’s just for a precious handful of close friends, as I’ve never been one to necessarily want the responsibility of caring for living things.  Especially those that drool (which includes not only dogs, but also babies, and some elderly people).

 

I love better at an arm’s length. 

 

This morning, though, I was tending to K.P.’s dogs, she was away on business, and it’s really a very simple set-up. I’ve done it several times before. First, you separate Buddy from Sophie because Sophie, every time she is fed pretends that it is the first she has ever been fed and will eat absolutely anything at the end of her nose.  And Buddy, well, he never puts up much of a fight, so…it’s best to feed them separately. 

 

Which is what I was doing.

 

I’d unleashed him and led him to his food bowl, and slowly, he began to eat, a nibble first, he requires a lot of encouragement having grown used to barely seeing his food before Sophie gets to it, and then, after gently goading, he dives full face into the bowl. I was standing outside the fence, leaning on it, cheering him to eat faster.  I was already running late. 

 

Now, K.P.’s fence meets three other fences in the far north corner of the backyard, and as you might have guessed, this is a neighborhood “for the dogs.”  I have yet to discover one house that does not have a dog, or two, or three, or a gutter-full of wandering cats. (I’m just as confused as you are).  

 

I’m inclined to feel grateful for this neighborhood as the overwhelming majority of dogs seem ragamuffin and from mutt descent. They appear to be dogs that had been rescued, which is by all means, a positive.  There are a few pure breds, and granted, I’m sure they’re loved equally.  Sophie, for instance, is a pure bred beagle.  The dog in the immediate backyard behind K.P’s is a whining Weimereiner. 

 

And he figures greatly into this story.

 

While I was standing outside the fence, I noticed some movement off to my right. A young girl, of let’s say 12 or 13, a very healthy 12 or 13, I should add, was slowly lifting the latch to the gate of what I was assuming was her own yard. I tried to think nothing of it, but she was wearing a faded and torn Whitesnake t-shirt, which I’m not sure she had the right to wear begin but a mere child, and fuzzy pink-ish slippers, which only a mere child could and would wear, so I had no choice but to stare. She stuck out, as it were.  

 

 

She then began to bend halfway at the waist and then further over, until she was on her hands and knees.  She crawled beneath the three windows at the back of the house, avoiding the small muddy area just a little in front of the nandina bushes, until she’d reached the screen door of the back porch.  At this, she jumped up and frightened an older woman who, unknown to me, had been sitting on the back porch with the newspaper and what appeared to be coffee. I looked up, and there she was, staring at me, while I was staring at what I assumed was her awkward daughter. 

 

The older woman was only slightly startled, “Quit sneaking around and doing that shit to me.”

 

To which the pudgy adolescent replied, “Well, me and the Weinerainer are thirsty.” (It was a silly mispronunciation; capital “W” emphasis mine).

 

Immediately, I began to create a history, a backstory, for this strange pair:  a daughter on the verge of schizoid behavior, spending hours every morning trying desperately to bond with her “Weinerainer” who led a life meant only to eat, drink, poop, and sleep. It was her only friend; she spent every morning crawling around in the yard, because she was obviously homeschooled, sniffing out strange and unique smells with him: the track of a Whitetail, the musk of a Calico, the fecund guano of a random fruit bat.  

 

 

And I’m sure she recorded these events in her diary.  Diaries, rather.  She reeked of someone who kept more than one.

 

Diaries are the Facebook of the homeschooled. Her mother was a bitter chain smoker, whose husband had phoned it in for the last 8-10 years of their difficult marriage, on a rotary.  Sex had stopped after the daughter showed signs of communicative disabilities. A second child, a rubbery boy of 5, had been allowed as a means of salvaging the decaying love they thought they still held for each other.  It didn’t work.  The husband left, taking the male heir, and eventually hooked up with a Chevron attendant, you know the one from that Chevron station that’s always right on the edge of town, having been shouldered out of the city limits by Wal-Mart, and now all the mother had left was her coffee, cigarettes, a modified Fleshjack, and the paper. Her name, undoubtedly, was Margaret Alice.  The embarrassment of birth, Michelle. 

 

The girl, somewhat deflated by her continued, and ill, attempts to frighten her mother, quickly surrendered and asked the mother to unlock the screen door.  She got up, lifted the latch, and the girl disappeared behind the wire mesh. I’m sure she had oatmeal to stick her fingers into, or a bottle of syrup to start kissing.  I wondered what her mother would teach her this day, and how much, if any, I might factor into the lesson:  don’t take candy from strange men who lean on borrowed fences and stare at us; never look a dogsitter in the mouth – I’m sure there’s a parable in there somewhere.

 

I only hoped she would pay attention to her mother, while in class, and if at all possible, give her mother something to live for.  I enjoyed a private giggle, at that. I can be so mean to those I don’t know. 

 

Of course, coffee drinkers are a hard people to read. 

 

I noted as I was getting Sophie from the house to put her in the backyard, that there was a large Bradford pear tree in Margaret Alice’s backyard.  

 

Being from  Mississippi, I knew what that meant. 

 

And yet, they hadn’t struck me as Southern Baptist.