Jetsam & Jetways
It was a ritual. Each Friday bout 5:45 pm I’d fill an empty copier paper box with the week’s desk flotsam and bring it home. Sometime Saturday or Sunday, I’d sit on the floor in the family room and sift through it all. Such was the work-life balance as Davenport City Administrator.
I had a system. There were color-coded file folders the stuff would get sorted into. The choices were File, Read, To Do, Dept Head, Out, Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs and Next Week. Out was my favorite, because it meant I was done with it. Dept Head was for topics the team needed to discuss, Read was typically professional magazines and journals I’d get to when I could and File meant Ilene would take custody. Ilene had a “filing system” inspired by sedimentary rock formations. Basically, just stacks, the bottom of which were petrified into administrative shale. There was also a garbage pile, which I sorted through twice, to make sure nothing important got thrown away.
The ritual hasn’t repeated itself in Seaside. Mostly because there’s no family to get home to, so what’s the point of leaving City Hall? Of all the things I’ve failed at, work-life balance is near the top. Not a complaint. An observation.
Back at the Iowa farmhouse, or so the Seasidians must imagine it, for the weekend. Kids gone, Marcia oh so thankfully not, and the cat trying to set a record for feline life-span. The boys of summer three wins away from getting farther than ever in my life-time as the leaves of October fall. Colin texts to note Javy runs like we did as Davenport Pony Leaguers. In all, a lovely fifty something hours. But there’s some work to do.
A bag and a box full of Dad’s lifework finds me sitting on the family room floor again. Some Navy files and scrapbooks, some family military keepsakes, including a Screaming Eagles patch his uncle dropped into Normandy wearing, a photography class assignment (he’d smile his grandson is swimming against the digital tide these days) and a collection of art from his days in the TB sanitarium. Of all the things I’m grateful for, being the son of an artist is near the top.
But I’ve got no system for this.
It was 1973. Dad was in the sanitarium. Me and Gene were at the orphanage. Which raises the question; is it “at” the orphanage or “in” the orphanage? “At” suggests you were just visiting, and could leave if you wanted. That wasn’t the case, for Dad or his boys. If you tried to leave either, the sheriff would come get you. But “in” suggests you were in it, consumed by it. I’ve fought against the notion of being consumed by the orphanage since … oh … 1973. So “at” the orphanage is - for me - not a random word choice.
Dad’s art is conclusive. He was in the sanitarium, fighting for his life. The art is a series of needle and drug drawings. They were pumping a cocktail of medicine into him and he was churning out art that was always defiant and typically humorous. At times risqué and at times dark, I have to curate it. I can churn through any inbox deftly, but this is tough stuff. I read the dates on the drawings and see when he was having tough times. Family ripped from him, alone in a tuberculosis sanitarium, drugs tearing through his body and mind. I was 10, in my own daily struggle for sovereignty in a place where that word only could mean you went down fighting.
Do I keep the dark and despondent drawings? For who?
It’s all the more tough given the 2016 recalls 1973 life circumstance. I don’t have tuberculosis (more, here) and the Davenport deftness got the kids into adulthood thank goodness. But the family separation is the same. Seaside’s about as lovely a place to live via toaster oven as any place could be, and I’m grateful for it. No sheriff will come get me if I leave, and who would want to anyway, is a fair but not insubstantial question. Dad pondered through drawing. I got this word thing, instead.
I keep one drawing. It’s one with a winged needle, freed from a cage, with a one-word caption.
Victory.
Forty-three years from 1973, he still shows the way.
