Nostalgia

 I went to McDonald's yesterday.  Mom wanted a hamburger and fries.  The original one was torn down and remodeled, blends in with the neighborhood more, no longer red.

It opened in 1976, to quite a bit of fanfare. It was the first major fast food franchise in town, first of many. (Years later I remember reading that my hometown wasn't worth mentioning in a guidebook.  Just a bunch of fast food joints along the highway between Deception Pass and Coupeville.)

We had three local places: Kow Korner, Michalob's (I can't recall the exact name, I think it had formerly been an A&W's, and still served root beer in a "frosted mug" and had the old car hop stands for ordering, also no longer functioning, and closed within a year or two after McDonald's opened) and my favorite, Arctic Circle down by City Beach (might've been a franchise out of Oregon, as they still existed there after the local one closed.) Of the three Kow Korner lasted the longest. We used to go there after the end of berry season, everyone got a hamburger or ice cream or something, and they gave out awards, or announced who the fastest pickers were.  It's now a bank.

Anyway, it was a year of Summer Olympics, and McDonald's had scratch cards that if team USA medaled in listed event, you could get free food, depending on if it were gold, silver, or bronze.  Maybe gold equalled a Big Mac? So, we'd sit around watching the Olympics and run down when our tickets matched a win. I think we won medals in boxing and track. It was the Olympics of the first perfect 10 in gymnastics where Nadia Comaneci and Nellie Kim dominated, eclipsing Olga Korbut.

I don't remember much else about that summer. We'd just moved into the house at the end of the school year, and I'd switch to my fourth school at the end of the summer, and since I was bullied all year at the previous school, any place else was an improvement.

It was the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence and I flew on my first plane when my mom, sister and I went to El Paso to visit my grandmother later in the summer. And most of my memory of that was sticking to the hot bus seats to go to the Base and eating deep-fried burritos and grape juice in the X-change cafeteria.  And one of the planes was a DC 10. 

Anyway, I bought her food, and then changed my mind and bought a Shamrock shake, nostalgic and overly sweet, but I finished it. I haven't had one since high school.

Mom said she was expecting lettuce or tomato, but I think that's a different burger joint, across town.

Some time later

When I'm in the kitchen I remember late nights measuring out pills, and later, syringes of meds to keep on the four-hour cycles. Afraid of being alone with you. Afraid it would be beyond me to keep you safe. Every time you attempted to pull yourself out of bed when your legs could no longer bear you up. And later when you slept all the time, wishing I had real conversations with you and not just fighting with you to make you understand you could no longer walk. That you were already home. That you didn't need to take care of anything at 3 in the morning.

I remember how you wanted to wash dishes as a way to contribute when your world had shrunk. How I snuck into the kitchen and rewashed then because they were never quite clean.

On the Amtrak I saw your birds and thought to tell you they haven't flown north yet for the year. Remembered the fields where they were flocking, to tell you. On the day before your funeral driving up in between squalls I saw a rainbow, and then on the side of the highway the  end of the rainbow bent into someone's front yard.  So mundane, and somehow appropriate. How an eagle circled the funeral home before the service. How it snowed after. How the deer visited every night and stood out the window, and on a night before you passed on, when we looked back after you received last rites the does were standing there watching, feet away, as if they wanted to bear witness to your leaving, too.

I'm sitting on the couch where I kept myself awake half of every night, wondering how long we could go on like this and knowing there was no other choice. Finding it within ourselves to carry on, knowing that's how we love.

After

The wind blows a lot where I grew up, and almost never where I live now. Not in the same buffeting that you feel give force against your body as you walk, or riffles through your clothing draining any warmth you had.

I look for new places that don't conjure memories, the building up of small losses almost imperceptible until they fall like an avalanche upon you and bury you in grief.  Still, eating tacos now, I remember several years ago saying I was going to buy a taco and you handed me money to buy you some, too. You were confused by the soft corn street tacos, not sure how to eat them.  I suppose I wanted you to try something new that you might like. You thought I was going to Taco Bell for hard shell tacos.  Later, I checked myself and asked the shop for hard shells plus ground beef, not necessarily on the menu, but they made it. I wanted you to have something that you liked.  And later still, even places you liked you could barely eat a third of what you asked for.  I would say you were winding down, but then remember that in high school I could eat a whole pizza in one sitting, and I can't do that now.

I walked to the thrift store to pick up something to read, found a blazer that fit and some nice t-shirts.  They gave me the senior discount.  Yesterday, waiting for a bus at a transfer station in the sudden snow, with my backpack, I think I was seen as a homeless 20-something, a couple kept asking if I was alright and if I needed a ride somewhere.  In truth I had an hour wait, and then a family friend called and offered to come get me.  Maybe the couple meant well...but it was a bus stop.  Not unusual to be waiting for a bus.  Still, it's so interesting how you're perceived based on surrounding circumstances.  The shorthand conclusion is easy, makes sense with all the information we have to constantly process, still, how much are we ever right about each other? What's hidden under the surface we bother to know?