The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My brother and I are about to make a long road trip back to Northern Maine where our family is from up next to the Canadian border. We’ll have our parents’ ashes in a couple of matching urns which we’ll have interred in the graveyard a block away from where our Old Man was born, not exactly a homecoming but a full circle nevertheless. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, clichéd or not. Our mother’s family graveyard is 7 miles north up Highway 1, not more than a quarter mile from where she was born at the farm nearby. She died a few years ago and the Old Man died a month ago. Time to make the journey back, I guess.

Those cemeteries go back to the early 1800’s. A lot of relatives buried there the past few centuries, two more on the way, but I doubt my brother and I will be buying plots for ourselves. Don’t think because we’re burying our parents back there we have plans to join them. Or the rest of the clan. We’re just honoring their wishes. I suppose the only requiem, the only memorial, if we can call it either, will be a weeklong reminiscence between just the two of us.

After Dad died, folks asked if I was okay. Sure, I said, the man was 100 years old, had a good life, survived World War Two, had a very successful career in the Forest Service, lived alone until a couple of years ago and still drove, still cooked for himself, wasn’t in any pain at the end, died in his sleep, an easy exit. What, I should want him to last a few more years, become a vegetable? He got to die with dignity, nothing to be sad about. We should all be so lucky…. Our mother, not so much. And still, not that bad either.

There was a poet, a guy named Bly back in Minnesota, who started some drug circle thing, men getting in touch with their inner selves, who claimed a man could never truly be a man until his father died. What a cart of horseshit! My brother and I took weeks off most years to boat down the Mississippi in houseboats, up the Suwanee and St. John’s Rivers in Florida, into Canada for fishing trip, camping up the eastern seaboard, listening to the Old Man’s life. We’d let him skipper the boats, sometimes to our peril. Great trips. All of them. We’ll take one last one together. Coming home it’ll be just us boys.

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A buddy asked me to meet him at a local pub for a beer recently, even said he’d buy … so naturally I overcame my hesitancy for imbibing alcohol and met up with him outdoors at the tavern at Terry’s Corner.  He was with a friend and by the time I’d stood in line waiting to buy my own ale, he was joined by another friend.  Soon after I got introduced, one of our artist buddies shambled over, then another late arrival and we had a picnic table party on our hands.  It was all pleasant enough chatting it up with a few new folks and old, but finally I swilled the last of my beer, pushed up from my seat and said, ‘Boyz, I got to get on home and save a marriage.’

They protested mildly but as men of the world, they understood.  Can’t be staying out all night drinking and carousing.  After all, we’re not twenty-somethings anymore.  Yesterday my pal rolled into the shop while I was working and after some amusing palaver he asked me what I thought of the folks I’d met the other night.  Nice guys, I said.  He gave me a querulous look and I said, what?  ‘Zorba’, I finally said, ‘maybe I missed something the other night.  I left early, remember?’

‘What do you think about the idea of getting together once in awhile?  On a regular basis.’

‘A drinking society?’ I asked.  ‘No,’ he said, ‘more like a men’s club.  You know, discuss issues.  Men’s issues.’

Jeepers, creepers, the idea of sitting around bellyaching about my man problems just never entered my mind, I guess, so I said as politely and delicately as I could, hell no, life’s too short.  The drinking part sounded okay, but the rest, not so much.  I’ve been in writers’ groups, artists’ groups, music groups … and trust me, I don’t recommend them to anyone unless they have a deep seated penchant for masochism.  I used to join boards back when I thought cross pollination might bring cultural awareness to our little island, so I attended countless meetings, sometimes one a day, for over a year.  Talk talk talk and nothing ever got done.  And we didn’t even drink at those which made it all the more senseless besides a total waste of time.

Zorba must have read my mind.  ‘We could drink too, you know.  Maybe discuss age related stuff, senior issues, old timers like us.’  Oh boy, now that would be fun, you tell me your latest surgery story and I’ll tell you about my trick knee.  Misery loves company, so they say, but I don’t think it cares for guests.  ‘Count me out, man, I’m too young for that.  You old farts have at it, be something to take you away from Wheel of Fortune if nothing else.  You want to start a Woman’s Group, I might consider it, but no way some drum circle with a bunch of men.’

So I missed my golden opportunity to join a Men’s Club.  My chance to air my grievances, my white male diminished privilege, my Viagra stories and bladder issues.  Fortunately for me, I have this blogsite.  Unfortunately for you…

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