Origins of the Universe and What It All Means (13 page)

“How's your mom?” he asks.

I tell him I'm in the middle of cleaning out Mom's house in Three Rivers because she'll never live there again, and it's a huge mess because she's a lifelong hoarder, you know, and the junk's piled sky high inside and out like in the old sitcom
Sanford and Son
—not to mention the rats' nests in the enclosed porch where Mom used to sleep on cool summer nights, oh my God I think she slept among rats, and the rodent poop, how it's all over her art studio, in every junk-filled box and on every pile of old papers and in between papers and inside boxes of dried paints, and junk and junk and junk, and old photos, and junk, and wadded clothes jammed between this and that, and junk and dust, and why are there random dishes and silverware in the box with extension cords and income tax returns and unopened boxes of Kleenex and canned corn, and did I mention the rat poop and junk, or maybe it's mice, you know hantavirus is a life-threatening disease spread to humans through contact with contaminated dust from mice droppings and it's really dusty out there in the art studio and I've had a headache for days—and it's a forty-minute drive each direction from her house to mine and I don't have time for the house-cleaning project or my school or my job, what with taking her to therapy and the doctors and keeping her engaged each day so she does more than watch the paint peel from the walls—and to make it a thousand times worse, she's a complete and utter pill when I try to engage her because she doesn't want to be engaged, she just wants to be left alone in the dark and not be spoken to, but she does want me to hover over her and fill her cup with peach Snapple and adjust her pillow and wiggle her big toe and smooth her blanket—just not talk to her while I do it—in other words, even though she's officially out of my house, even with the paid caregivers on duty—thank God we can afford the assisted living—I'm still a caregiver/slave and I might be stretched a little thin right now, and well, to be honest, I don't sleep well at night—in fact I hardly sleep at all and I haven't for a year now since she had the aortic dissection and succession of strokes and the ICUs and hospitals and rehab hospitals and skilled nursing facilities and then home health care at my house, and then finally, thank God for assisted living and everyone who's helped—the nurses, the therapists, my husband, Aunt Tonya, Mom's best friend, the other few friends I haven't managed to alienate because I've pretty much dropped out of sight what with all these new responsibilities that have taken over my life, and how I get annoyed even with people trying to help, even my friends or Mom's friends who are older and wiser and full of advice because, you know, I get tired of everyone giving me advice when they haven't lived a single day in my life...they tell me what I need to do,
you need to blah-blah-blah
they say, but they don't really fucking know what it takes, I mean
really
takes, and how most of it doesn't work and there are only so many hours in the goddamn day—well, they all tell me I'm a bit edgy (no fucking kidding) and that perhaps, just perhaps, I should go back to yoga or take a day off or get an antianxiety prescription. Like maybe Xanax.

“Oh, Carole, I'm so sorry,” he says. “I wish there was something I could do to help your mom.” And then he starts to cry. He says he wants to be by her side, just lie down on the floor next to her bed and tell her how much he loves her. “Do you think she would understand?” he asks. “Maybe that would help her get better. Should I fly back to see her?”

I tell my father now's not a good time to visit.

When I study that old photo, the one I showed my mother recently, the one of four-year-old me standing next to the laundry basket wearing my mother's bra, I imagine what fills the penumbra, the unseen area that lies beyond the framed border. I imagine my father, young again, holding the camera to his eye, his finger pushing the lever, the square flashcube illuminating the room while the aperture clicks open, then shut. I imagine the contents of my parents' house back then, the silverware with little starbursts patterned into the handles and the reel-to-reel tape recorder and the peace-sign pendent in my father's bottom desk drawer—and how, like all of us, my parents accumulated and periodically purged throughout their lives, purged during their moves from house to house, their shifts from marriage to divorce, from phases of interest to disinterest, from hobby to hobby, from career goals to accomplishments and compromised settlements. I imagine the one hundred and one boxes currently in my father's shed and wonder how he decided what was worthy of packing, worthy of saving. When I think about the decision process my father must have gone through—what to keep and what to discard, and the fact that he did so with the knowledge that he's coming close to the end of his life—well, this prompts me to reflect on my own life, decisions I've made, things I've acquired or let go, whether or not I've acquired the right contents for my life, tangible or otherwise.

Knowledge of our eventual death requires that we pay attention to life. The situation we find ourselves in—not just the fact that we die, but how incredibly rich the world is, how many things it offers us—demands that we manage the many choices we have in our relatively short lifespan. We've got this burden of figuring out what things are most worth going after, knowing, consciously or not, that someday we'll look back and possibly discover we didn't make the best choices. Although we have the chance for some do-overs, both in terms of our goals and our strategies for reaching them, we've got to be careful.

Okay, I'm paying attention. I'm trying to be careful. Swimming alone in the Amazon River might not be strategically sound, but to me, the experience—the challenge—was an important activity to engage in. Following my father through the Mexican desert of Cataviña, poking the sand for rattlesnakes—okay, the odds are a little dicey again. Worth the risk? The answer depends on what I'm trying to do with my life.

What adds value to our lives is the content of our lives—what should we fill our lives with? Sure, we want to pack in as much stuff as we can. But what's really worth going after? The way I see it, there are two different strategies.

•
    
Strategy #1:
Given the dangers of failure if you aim too ambitiously, you should settle for the kinds of goals that you're virtually guaranteed you'll accomplish. The pleasures of food, company, sex, hot fudge sundaes: eat, drink, and be merry. Pack in lots of small pleasures.

•
    
Strategy #2:
The first option is all well and good—you've got a pretty high chance of succeeding. The trouble is, those are small potatoes. Some of the most valuable things life don't come so readily, and there are no guarantees you'll achieve them. You might want to write a novel, compose a symphony, solve the biological mysteries of macro-evolution and punctuated equilibrium theory, or, for that matter, raise a family. Some fans of strategy number two might argue that these things are the most valuable things life can offer, that a life filled with these is more valuable than a life filled with small potatoes.

But if you had a guarantee—if God or the Universe or the Random Force Behind Sitting-up Mud said, “I promise you'll get the life you want. Would you rather have your blip-of-a-life filled with food and drink, or do you want a life filled with accomplishment?”—you might say the life filled with accomplishment holds more value. The trouble is, of course, a life aiming for greater accomplishments is also a life with a greater chance of failure. You aim to write the great American novel, and ten years later you decide you don't have it in you. Your article detailing the evolution of the arachnid internal skeleton of scorpions doesn't make quite the academic splash you'd hoped for. You have no children, and now that you're caring for your elderly parents—often begrudgingly—you wonder who will do the same for you someday, and wouldn't that be the end-all-be-all of just deserts for your ungrateful, unenthusiastic attitude?
Spectrum of reconciliation
, my ass. Buck up, sister. Find a damn place to stand and occupy the space with intent—are you in the cave, or out? I wonder who will clean out the contents of my empty house.

So what's the right strategy to take? I suppose many of us would say there's another option:

•
    
Strategy #3:
Get the right mixture. Aim for a certain number of large potatoes. Go for some large accomplishments, because if you manage to pull them off, your life will have more value. But also throw in a smattering of small potatoes—at least then, big-potato harvest or not, you're assured of something.

Most of us would agree to the benefits of Strategy #3. But what is the right mixture?

 

Thirty-Two

 

San Vicente, Mexico (1994)—

It wasn't the first time I'd heard his Big Bang monologue on the origins of the universe, nor would it be the last, but it was the first time I really listened to his words, and the first time I noticed the Big Bang sequence playing out before my eyes—in a town, a person, a life. In San Vicente, I caught my first glimpse of what I'd come to recognize as the “somethingness-that-erupts-from-nothingness” in one man's world, and the subsequent detonations that fire again and again, yet with slightly greater velocity each time.

My father and I had just begun our
Tuesdays with Morrie
play-it-by-ear road trip through Baja, and night number one was upon us. We drove along Mexican Federal Highway 1 in the dark. From where I sat behind the wheel, the black sky had fused with the horizon so tightly that the distinction between earth and sky ceased to exist. Bone-dry air pounded through the open windows of the car, drowning out the music tinning from the tape deck. From the dashboard speakers, Don McLean crooned his vigil to Vincent Van Gogh in the song “Starry, Starry Night” (we practically wore out the
American Pie
cassette during that trip, so if “Starry, Starry Night” wasn't actually playing at that moment, it was at least stuck in my head). We should have stopped for the night an hour ago, back in Ensenada or perhaps Rosarito Beach. Never drive at night—rule number one in Mexico, where dark roads are notorious for potholes, meandering animals, and gun-toting bandits. The perpetual desolation of the Baja Desert seemed to go on forever, and for a long time the headlights' dim glow did nothing more than illuminate the emptiness ahead.

When we rolled into the dusty town of San Vicente, its explosion of activity and light sprang from the barren land like an oasis. It wasn't the sort of town that attracted tourists. I imagine most Americans would visit only by default while driving the trans-peninsular highway on their way to someplace else. We inched along the two-lane highway, which was the one and only paved street in the town, past stray dogs and food carts and pickup beds loaded with passengers, kids playing soccer in the dirt, and men sprawled in white plastic chairs that leaned against turquoise stucco walls. Maybe a couple hundred souls populated this town, with its one Pemex gas station, one grocery store, a couple of tire shops, an auto mechanic, two sit-down restaurants, and lighted pole signs blaring
Tecate
,
Coca-Cola
, and
Pharmacia
. Despite its bleak appearance, the town teemed with life. The air was full of pedestrian chatter and exhaust and music and the smell of roasting corn.

My father did all the talking at the motel counter. I don't speak Spanish fluently, but I recognized enough words to get the gist of the conversation. Just as the town seemed to burst from the nothingness of the nighttime desert, my father sprang forth in his interactions with the motel clerk.

Yes
, the woman said,
we have a room available, and no, the beds do not have fleas.

I didn't know if was customary to ask about fleas, but the question struck me as a bit odd. We weren't yet twenty-four hours into this getting-to-know-you excursion, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect, either from my father or from the circumstances.

My father asked the young woman her name, then proceeded to fill her in on our situation...and then some.
This is my thirty-year-old daughter, Carolina
, he said in Spanish, pronouncing my “Spanish” name “Cat-o-leen-a.”
She lives in Central California where she teaches elementary school. My wife, Marina, is Mexican, but she's at home in Southern California with my other daughter, Liza. I have two daughters and one son, but only one daughter from my Mexican wife. Carolina here, she doesn't speak Spanish. She tells me she took French in high school, but of course, that doesn't do her any good here in Mexico, does it? Ha, ha!

Okay, Dad, time to wrap up, I thought.

The young woman and my father went back and forth for several minutes, but the conversation moved too quickly for me to pick out anything more than a few of the major words. It seemed like he was giving our life stories to this stranger.
I'm a professor
, he said of himself.
I have been speaking Spanish for forty years. My wife doesn't enjoy traveling like I do. The car is packed with camping gear but we decided to get a room for the night. Do you think our gear will be safe from thieves in the parking lot, or should we empty the car's contents and take everything to the room?

Jesus H. Christ, is that a wise thing to ask, I wondered.

Before my father asked how much the room would cost, he opened his wallet, which bulged so wide with its dozens of credit cards that he kept a rubber band around it. He removed the rubber band, flopped the wallet open, and fanned out the paper bills so the corner of each bill and its numerical imprint extended from the billfold slit to reveal one thousand dollars in American twenty-dollar bills.

Do you take American cash?

Yes, of course.

Splendid. How much for the night?