6:00 p.m. and the thermometer reads 101 degrees: in the shade of the covered back porch.
Ugh! What a garden spot we live in!
What was that I was scribbling, a day or two ago, about wishing I could be living back in San Francisco? Where I belong….
And…what kind of worm could possibly have crawled into my parents’ brains to give them the idea that nothing would do but what we must move to Arizona?
….But what they must buy a house in ugleee Sun City, beneath the melodic roar of the Luke Air Force Base fighter jets?
….But what they must send their daughter to school at the University of Arizona? (That would be the daughter who was set to enroll in UC Berkeley…)
….And then, after she graduates, move her into their ugleee Sun City home and have her live there with them until she finishes trade school and gets a job in downtown Phoenix?
Well, I’ll tellya: for them, it was the right move.
My mother dearly LOVED Sun City. Lived there in joy and contentment until her tobacco habit killed her.
My father evidently liked Sun City, too. He made no sign that he wanted to move out of their cute little house after she died. And when he remarried, he and the Dragon Lady lived there until they capitulated to old age and moved into an old-folkerie in central Phoenix. A prison for old folks, that was.
That place made Sun City look good, for sure. From my point of view, anyway.
My mother’s dying brought an end to the joy in my father’s life, pretty much once and for all. The New Wife did nothing to revive his happiness: she was a witch who tormented me and made him understand the value of what he had lost in my mother.
Oh well: 20 years later, here we still are in Lovely Uptown Arizona, baking away in the heat, luxuriating in bird-brained conservative politics, plodding along day by day.
As you might gather by the tone of this post, I’m not nuts about Arizona. If I could move away, I would. But as long as my son is here, I ain’t goin’ anywhere. Plus I doubt if nowadays I could afford to live in the Bay Area, which really is the only place on this earth I’d prefer to live.
{chortle!} Think o’ that… Where have I lived?
Long Beach, California
San Francisco, California
Alameda, California
Berkeley, California
Sun City, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
Beirut, Lebanon
London, England
Tunbridge, England
On & on…helle’s belles, I can’t remember them all!
Nor, one might add, do I want to….
