And my Father too. Finally I understand some of those strange things he knew were true, things he tried to tell me, but how could someone under fifty possibly understand those convoluted lessons? And how could he have resisted trying to share them with me? They were lessons I never wanted at the time—eyeballs rolling. Now I’m rummaging through dog-eared brain cells and time-warped tapes to find them again.

Honor your Mother and your Father; that’s one of the big ten. Because you will become them; was that the tag line? That sort of goes with whole Vengeful God of the Old Testament thing now, doesn’t it?

Of course our parents were saints, when we choose to romanticize them: the greatest generation. I begin to comprehend the difficulties they faced, the challenges and uncertainties they met and played through without transition, therapy, Prozac, chevre, or good American wine. Sometimes I even understand the well-meaning if imperfect solutions they foisted upon our lives.

And our parents are a pain. I listen to the frustrations of my friends dealing with frail parents. We swear to pinch each other out of such behaviors when we are older, frailer, more fearful and increasingly dependent. We will tell someone when we fall, feel ill, depressed, or lonely. We’ll make sure several people have ALL the keys they may need to our houses, cars and caravans. We won’t wait for people to call us. We will initiate contact in whatever the favored medium of the day may be.

We will clean stuff out, give and throw it away and keep the important stuff where it can be found. We will tell our doctors EVERYTHING. We will not cast people out for their choices in lip color, hosiery, language, religion, or the lack thereof. We will try to be “with it,” but not too with it—if you know what I mean.

I’m curious to see how we do with that. Will I really tell Julie that she’s crazy-making? Or will I be too nice? Will I cause my daughter to nag at me endlessly and yet remain deaf to the things that could make my life easier? Some of my people have already become rather rigid. I’m still busy discovering the rules I adopted unwittingly forty and more years ago and breaking them over my knee. I’m a grown-up; I don’t need no stinkin’ rules. But what makes us think we’ll age more gracefully? After all—we are our Mothers and our Fathers.

I try to keep my speed down to 80 as I blast across the miles of bare land. I spy, with my little eye: small scrubby growth; a few dried blossoms; a large road kill—is it a young deer or maybe a mangled javalina? Long passed, now. Occasional rocky outcroppings seem like something really special on the horizon.

I’m zooming across the American west with mind-games for the solo road-warrior. Whatever was it that drew people here, 250 miles East of El Paso and 100 miles west of Odessa? I wonder what this dry, open place looked like to my Grandmother’s eyes at fifty-seven.

This is where Selma came, arm-in-arm with a husband she barely knew, after middle years had been torn apart by anti-Semitism, three and a half years in concentration camps, return to war-torn Germany and salvation in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. Was she frightened? Excited? Hopeful? Disappointed? Relieved? Inspired?

Half an hour from the border at El Paso, the guard stops me to ask:
“Are you a citizen?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“Fort Stockton.”
“Why—there isn’t anything there?”

In Stockton, Comanche springs raced from the ground. This precious water revived stagecoach passengers fearful of Comanche raids. It allowed Jefferson Davis to dream about fleets of camels patrolling the land. It filled the best watermelons and the old swimming pool.

Nathan Winkler founded a dry-goods store in Fort Stockton in 1912. He’d come to the US in 1900 from Austria-Hungary, not yet twenty. His half brother brought him to West Texas to learn the retail trade. There were handfuls of young Jewish merchants sprinkled across small western settlements.

In 1951, Nathan, a vigorous, prosperous widower with four grown children left Fort Stockton for a visit to Fort Worth. He was introduced to Selma, who had recently moved there with her two daughters, and he wooed her in one week.

Selma must have been so surprised, so grateful for a second chance at love and at life. This sun-scorched land must have looked strange and promising. People were slow, warm and friendly. How different it must have looked, those dusty blocks where cactus struggled to grow replacing Manhatten’s green parks. Here, the men were handsome and well-dressed in bolos, plaid shirts and enormous hats from Winkler’s.

Put aside your nightmares, Selma. Forget the rocks through your windows and the blood sprayed across the walls of the Riga Ghetto. Take comfort in the new and familiar: the rituals of married life; man and wfe working at the store; civic leaders. Money was available; it could be made and spent. There were new things to have—a home, a car, diamond jewelry, furs. People in Texas didn’t speak in terms of the four or five cows that brother Norbert would have brokered in Westphalia. Here, people had thousands of head of cattle. They took enormous risks and pulled oil right out of the ground. But the biggest difference was safety, security, warmth, acceptance—knowing that your hardest times were behind you and you’d made it through somehow.

Changes aren’t easy at 57: foods; names; weights, measures; language; the way it’s done. Selma wrestled with the English language, laced with Texas drawls and Spanish phrases, into an agreeable tongue that offered her the hearts of her neighbors and even the pages of Tolstoy.

Her new husband was a silent man, a skillful merchant, a far-sighted investor in companies and people. She relished the role of the merchant’s wife: a life she’d trained for forty-five years before. She dove into the dust of her back yard and pulled out apricot trees, watermelons, plums and even roses. She qvelled over her grandchildren. Finally she had a normal life, full of the nice things she had once owned and all the modern appliances the 1950′s had to offer.

Working at the store, she came to know everyone. She licked her wicked wounds and revealed her exotic and disturbing past on occasion at ladies luncheons and rotary breakfasts. Selma flowered in the relentless sun that would whip her sheets dry in a flash.

We would go to Stockton for Spring break, flying from Chicago, loaded with packages and reeking of garlic, anise, salt and Westphalian rye bread. We transferred in Dallas, hopped to Midland, drove for an hour through oil derricks and tumbleweed. As the trip grew hotter, we smelled more strongly of our Chicago deli imports. It became harder to carry the ill-wrapped goods with their string handles and awkward corners. They would bump and tip. Finally, we were at Grandma’s, spilling our goodies across her kitchen table and drawing her delighted exclamations.

“See, we even brought a little plant.”

A tiny start had grabbed my Mother’s attention on our way out the door and found a hand between us. In Fort Stockton, where even the cactus wanted care, that extra spot of green was precious; a little spot of life that Selma could offer a second chance.

Days shorten and my blood cools down enough to stick to business. Morning clouds fix me to my chair and reward my hard work with afternoon sunshine. Evenings come earlier, the crickets are frantic and the air is stirred a bit serious. Summer still sparkles the corners of my mind. I can almost touch the fun, the folks, the picnics, the fresh fruits, veggies and the salty smells. But that serious wants more of me and I give in, almost relieved by the rhythm it suggests. Yes, I feel good doing my work and looking outside for a dog-day reward. If only the summer evenings would linger. What a pay-off—long slow light and frog songs on my deck. But the light has been narrowing since June now. I’m too late again. Next year I’ll pitch my offer in May—no, next year I won’t forget.

This new fall energy refreshes from the hot summer lazy’s. Too soon it will sag under the wet and gray-again days, then holiday-indulgence daze. But now it’s dry and green, mums-in-the-stores with notebook castanets snapping. It’s fall.

I’ll celebrate a new year of apple-sweetness and pumpkin festivals. Little wisps of summer will sneak through in golden light and red-hot grills. I’ll grab the warm teasing afternoon, knowing it might be the last. Days will speed their spin as the last drops of the year are sucked down the hole, fall and all.

Frazzle, you little devil you. Yes I’m talking to you. Why can’t we just get along?

You and your obsessions, compulsions and fears. You keep me working and reworking it to death sometimes. You chain me to the computer screen just so you know I’m hard at it—not even letting me get to the creative bit. That way you think I can’t wander off. You’ve got me grinding away, fearful that I might never write anything again, that I might lose my nerve to perform: fearful, frantic Frazzle.

Heavens, I might just get lost in a sea of chocolate, red wine and New Yorker articles, a lazy day in bed, a gad about town. I bet you worry I’ll polish up my passport and forget to come home. You’re so jealous of all the things I might decide to do. Really Frazzle, sometimes you won’t even let me put away the dishes. Do you think I’ll be seduced by the dishwasher and fill its pokey belly just to avoid writing? But that’s how it is with you, isn’t it Frazzle. Fess up. You’re a control freak.

I know you mean well, Frazzle. Your insistence gets the bills paid and helps me find the desk beneath the rubble. It sorts and stacks little pots of this and that, all fluffed and alphabetized: get well; happy birthday; be on-time; connect the dots. You’ve helped me prepare my backseat for all the events that could arise today and then the next. Sometimes, my calendar jumps a whole week I’m so damn prepared. Lists are magnificently checked.

Thanks for spots of order-from-chaos, the full plate of work, a comprehensible accounting system. You really do know how to do it Frazzle—whatever “it” is. Sincerely, I need you; I am thankful for the tasks you push me through.

And now Frazzle, having accorded you something of your due and thinking kindly on you, could I ask your favor in return? Please worry somewhat less. Let me slow, slip, tumble and squeak along the normal pleasures of the day. Let us breathe the air we’ve earned—together as colleagues—Frazzle. Yes, I will respect you—dare I say expect you—in the anxious rush of three a.m. But just now, let’s have us another glass of wine… and there’s that article on page 78….and we can go to town in our candy apple lipsticks. Oh please Frazzle? Just these next twenty times or so?