Scanmaster Bears Slab of Universal Grief with Panache

I have recently returned from a refreshing trip to the mother-and-father ship in Ann Arbor, Michigan, during a period which I understand was on the warm and humid side, though you couldn’t prove it by me, since after decades of suffering, my parents now have central air conditioning.

Just before I left here, my mother wrote that they had turned the A/C on already, because when it wasn’t on, there was an annoying noise: “It’s so HOT!”

Heard in the San Francisco airport; the speaker was a boy of about four: “Mommy, are those things alligators or not?”

Last year my visit home triggered a state of anxiety and low-level distress that took months to abate, but this year I felt very serene, though I was still sad when I left.

Living so far away often seems sad, but now instead of telling myself I am making a fatal wrong choice, I tell myself that this is where I live currently, and that it may change in the future, or not, and that it does entail some melancholy. It is my little piece of the universal grief to bear with fortitude.

Flying was fine, too. By the time I actually step on the plane, I’m prepared to meet my maker, and am also trying to look friendly so no one thinks I’m a terrorist or that I’m the kind of Gloomy Gus who might be going to die that very day (which is one of the ways I used to decide whether it was safe to be on a given flight: did the other people on the plane look like people who would still be alive the next day?), which means I’m smiling and looking calm, so I often end up feeling unbelievably relaxed.

When a blip of fear arises, instead of thinking it means I’m having a premonition of disaster—as I did for decades, even before people had announced explicit intentions to make our planes explode—I regard it as an expected fellow traveler, along with Mara, the whisperer of worrisome things. Sometimes Claustrophobia (doesn’t she have a pretty name?) visits for a moment, too.

I felt more anxious returning than going, which may be attributable to having time to take one extra sinus-drying Sudafed before I went to the airport.

We watched lots of DVDs in the evenings: Stranger Than Fiction, Flushed Away, Collateral, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Letters from Iwo Jima, Barton Fink, The Triplets of Belleville, God Said, Ha!

Top honors go to Flushed Away—it is completely charming, especially the warbling slugs. Don’t miss the slug singing his or her heart out during the closing credits.

In Collateral, Tom Cruise scolds Jamie Foxx for wanting to skip a visit to his mother in the hospital: “She carried you in her womb for nine months.”

“I carried you in my womb for nine months,” announced my mother.

“Thank you for carrying me in your womb for nine months.” Then I turned and said the same thing to my father, who said, “You’re welcome.”

When my mother paused one DVD several times in a row, my father said mildly, “I believe you’re interfering with the artistic integrity of this production.”

Over the course of four days, my mother and I went through several boxes of her mother’s effects, mainly photos, during which project I heard myself referred to as “the hard-driving scanmaster.” The original plan was to scan every photo, but that had to be abandoned.

My mother was hoping to end up with no actual objects in her possession, but there was some evolution there, too. By the end of the project, we were keeping photos of agreeable-looking babies even if we had no idea who they were.

Almost every night, my father cooked a splendid multi-course mostly vegetarian healthy dinner. Every day for breakfast, I had my mother’s excellent home-baked bread. For the first time ever, there was no food frenzy. Such visits used to be one big binge, though it has gotten increasingly better over the years (now decades).

This visit seemed entirely free of immoderate eating, though I realized I was having trouble defining what that is, though if two people sit down with a new gallon of ice cream apiece, that might be an example of it. I guess it's eating you feel yucky about afterwards.

I saw my friend Amy twice. One day we had lunch at Café Zola and then walked around downtown. It was warm and humid, and I took her to a spot where I used to go with Laura Sauve 35 years ago in the oven-like Ann Arbor summers: a bench by the entrance to a University of Michigan library. It’s under a huge overhang and always has a slight breeze and is a bit cooler than anywhere else.

On Sunday, I wished my father a happy Father’s Day. “Same to you,” he replied politely.

Later that day, we had lunch with my mother’s brother—my beloved Uncle Rick—in Trenton.

I took no photos, as it diminishes the pleasure of my hosts, but maybe the Scan Technician will send a scan.