“Eddie is coming to Phoenix”

giraffe by duniya
Friday, April 25, 2008 6:26 am

“Eddie is coming to Phoenix”

This is that pretty time when the light shines thru the green leaves, turning them into green light. And the sparrow hops from branch to branch. I am totally enjoying this world of green out my window. From my other window it is just blue sky but my eyes are always drawn back to this world of green. It still seems like a new and wonderful phenomenon to me. The sun must be just above the mountains now to be turning my leaves into green light. It is still frosty cool, the birds love this weather. They are having a happy morning. The rest of my yard is still in shade. It is just the tree right out my window which is all lit up. It is a gift for me. Lulu is still sleeping, and Beanie just left. Bill is still abed. It’s nice having warm creamy coffee in this early wide awake time.

Eddie is going to be at a conference in Phoenix for two days, during the first week in August. His sister Helen will be in New York then, she is taking Sammy in to be with his father. Helen leaves towards end of July and will be there two weeks. I don’t know Ed’s itinerary, just that he will be in Phoenix for those two days. It is so interesting to my mind that Eddie is coming all the way from Jamaica, where he has a farm and lives, to be in my neck of the woods. And Helen will be going all the way from Maui where she now lives, back to New York City. Those are both huge distances to travel, clear across the country. It’s just fun to imagine your friends in new places. I wouldn’t want any of these trips myself, I am not a traveler, I am a stay-at-home girl. But I like imagining their trips. I find it exciting and interesting picturing where they will be and what they will be doing.

Of course New York does not excite my imagination. For me it is a stale idea. I lived there way too long, way past the time when I wanted to be living there. I lived there way past the time it had turned totally stale for me. So the idea of Helen and Sammy returning there is exciting from the reunion aspect, revisiting the past, being back where we all came from, returning to your old home town. Where Helen lives now, Maui, an island in the Pacific, I have no idea what it is like. But who is not enthralled with idea of South Pacific island, it is part of the romantic imagination. Even if all of Helen’s phone calls are from when she is on the way to Costco. And she had the identical experience of unsympathetic public library policy in Maui as I had in Tucson.

As Helen said “back in New York I could talk my way out of anything, but when I couldn’t find the video to return, and lied and told them it was stolen from my car, they said ‘show me the police report.’” And in my case, a smidgeon of ice tea had spilled on a brand new huge hardback, the worst book in the world. A gazillion page hardback by Carl Bernstein about the Pope. I read two pages and gave it up. I knew why no one had taken it out before me. I was the first lender. I put it aside and sure enough iced tea spilled on it. It was a very tiny faint stain, but they wanted me to pay for the whole book. No way!

That is how both Helen and I lost our library privileges. That is how we both found out we are not still back in New York. In New York they let you get away with anything. New York is still back in the mindset of the turn of the century, last century, where it was still considered a wonderful thing that people were using the public libraries. Their attitude is not punitive. You are still looked at as an immigrant who is educating herself. You are to be encouraged to use the library.

It turns out there is a statute of limitations on lost library privileges. Either that or they lost the information on the computer. Because after I was in court on the morning of 9/11, we walked over to the Main Library. I confided to their librarian what had happened and she looked up my record and said “there is nothing against it” and issued me a new card. Which I happily used until 4 summers ago, when it had not rained for past 3 years. And I left my open library book by my open window when we went swimming and then did big supermarket shopping at Fry’s. I remember the huge downpour as we were driving back from Fry’s. Of course my bed clothes were all soaked and SO WAS MY LIBRARY BOOK. Bill worked like a dog to save my library book so I would not lose my library privileges again. He meticulously put a sheaf of loose-leaf paper in between each page of the book, and then put a huge weight on top of it, so it would not show up that the book had ever gotten wet. After all that, it was practically undetectable. But not to the Tucson public library system! Even tho I put it in the book-drop of a totally different branch library, and crossed my fingers every which way, each time I try to reserve a book on the computer, I get “please see the librarian about problem with your card.” And when I try to take out a book myself, using my card at the automated system, I get “there is a problem with your card, please see the librarian.” So I have been using Bill’s card ever since.

We were back in court in January and used the free public parking under the library. When I went upstairs to have them vouch the parking card, I thought ‘maybe the Main Branch is my lucky place, and luck will strike twice for me.” I went over to the librarian, told her what happened, and again she looked it up and said “I see nothing against your card, do you want me to make out a new card for you?” But this time I knew Bill was waiting. I didn’t want to make him wait anymore. No one goes to court unless they are in the midst of something traumatic. I just thanked her and said “I have my old card at home, I will bring it to my local library, I am so happy to hear I can use it again.” But when I punched in the numbers to reserve a book last month, again I got “please see librarian you have a problem.” So I just used Bill’s card again and forgot about it.

Naturally it is very intriguing for me that Eddie is going to be in Phoenix. Phoenix is 90 miles away from Tucson, but we are in the same huge valley. From the sky it looks like this was once an ocean bottom. And it is the kind of huge vast valley you would see at the bottom of huge vast ocean. The scale is tremendous. Which maybe explains why we get the same weather. During monsoon season, the same huge clouds cover both of us. We get the same thunder, the same lightning, the same rain. And we all get the same heat, altho everyone in Tucson is aware that Phoenix is 3 degrees hotter than Tucson. Once you got over 100 degrees, each degree feels like ten degrees. And we try to make ourselves feel cooler by constantly reminding ourselves ‘it’s hotter in Phoenix.’ Of course when we are shivering in the desert winter, we forget that. But during the inferno summer we remind ourselves 5 times a day.

Eddie will be arriving from the sweetest island in the Caribbean, a wonderful Caribbean paradise. I was once in Jamaica for 4 days, so I know. To Phoenix, which will be like the inside of a pizza oven the first week in August. But he must be used to heat in summer. I was in Jamaica in the winter, but I imagine Jamaica summers like Florida, unless the Caribbean keeps it cool. For us the humidity which comes with the monsoons is unbearable, we are used to zero humidity, we never sweat, because every bit of moisture evaporates before it forms, which cools us down, and there is no such thing as being sticky. But in monsoon season we have humidity. I don’t know how it compares to humidity in Jamaica. Because in all the time I have been in Tucson, I have only used the word “muggy” once. I tried to describe to myself what it felt like being outside and the word “muggy” came back to me from a long time ago. Tucson heat is never as bad as a NYC heat wave. The problem with desert heat is its longevity, 5 months of it. In June we love it. By September we get out the map to figure out which part of the North we want to move to. And by October we start to hold our breath, because we know sometime this month the heat will finally break. Usually by mid-October it does. And the desert is restored to its incredible beauty. That is when we get our purple mountains.

Which are actually every shade of purple. They start out as the color of black raspberry ice cream, as the sun starts to set, and wind up being every shade of purple before the sun goes down. It is the big treat we get for going thru our long endless summer.